Some Things Are Just Gifts
by miraworos
Summary: Princess Allura finds herself stranded on an icy, inhospitable planet with her least favorite "ally." But if they don't find a way to work together, they might not survive long enough to be rescued. AU post-season 4, not canon-compliant after season 5. Slow-burn, preemptive fix-it fic, tropey romance with more plot/action than I intended. I was in a mood for something sweet.
1. Mission

Allura checked the algorithm Pidge sent her three times before entering it into the console the sentry had been guarding. The base on Sala's moon had proved a difficult target, and she didn't want to ruin her chance of getting the arming codes for the Naxzela bombs by mistyping a decimal point.

"Did you get them?" Pidge's whisper, transmitted through Allura's gauntlet, sounded like a tinny squeak.

"Not yet. Just a few more doboshes…"

She typed each digit carefully, not blinking so as not to miss the number's appearance on the screen. She couldn't blow this—not her first solo covert mission. For one thing, they desperately needed the codes to be able to disarm the bombs Zarkon's forces liked to bury just under the mantle of key strategic planets. For another, Lance would laugh at her. A lot.

An ominous thump sounded just outside the room she was huddled in, and she stopped typing, barely daring to breathe as she strained her senses for signs of detection. The sentry crumpled at her feet was only temporarily deactivated and, thanks to Pidge's foresight of providing something called a "piggyback" program, would report only a minor glitch in its monitoring of the console when it rebooted. But if anyone else found her, she'd be in trouble.

After a few ticks, she wiped her sweaty palms on her tunic and resumed typing. Whether or not someone was about to discover her, she needed the codes before she could escape to her ship.

Finally, she managed to access the mainframe and copy the files onto her gauntlet. But before she could send the transmission, alarms blared, the door slid open, and someone in a cobalt space suit flitted past the opening at near impossible speed with a canister of white-blue quintessence strapped to his or her back. A platoon of sentries followed the person past the opening. It appeared that Allura was not the only infiltrator at Zarkon's base.

Without any sort of plan beyond _quintessence_ , Allura leaped up, bayard drawn, and sped after the bottle and its bearer.

Dispatching the sentries wasn't hard. One grazed her elbow with its laser, but it barely singed her suit. The crunch of metal, the hot smell of ozone, the adrenaline thrumming through her brain all felt like a second skin to her at this point. As if this had always been the real Allura, and the princess-diplomat had only been a dream.

She angled her body for a wall jump, firing her suit's thrusters just long enough to shoot her out of the way of a slicing blade. She rebounded, flipped, and used her momentum to slam feet first into the Galra guard. The guard went down with a grunt but wasn't completely out, so Allura punched him with her bayard.

The unmistakable swish of bay doors sounded ahead, and Allura jumped up to follow. If she didn't capture the quintessence now, the thief would get to whatever ship was closest and make a run for it. Allura could not let that happen. There was already too much rogue concentrated quintessence out in the universe. They couldn't afford for random thieves to be selling it on the black market now as well.

As Allura ghosted through the crack between the closing bay doors, she caught sight of the thief ahead. The alarms were still blaring, causing a headache to form right behind her left temple. Somehow they were louder in the ship hangar.

As he—most likely a he, she could tell now—rounded the nose of a Galra fighter, the hangar's outer doors slid open as well. Allura switched directions mid-stride, giving up on catching the thief by hand as he had too much of a head start. His fighter was already lifting off and angling toward the exit. Another few ticks, and she'd be in her own ship and could continue pursuit from the air. It wouldn't be as easy to catch him, especially since she wouldn't be flying Blue, but she had to—

Laser blasts heated the air around her just as she ducked behind her ship. So much for evading detection. Her only hope now was that the Galra commander in charge of the station didn't look too closely beyond the stolen quintessence to see what else had been taken.

She palmed open the hatch and slid inside the cramped vehicle she'd borrowed from the rebels. Now she regretted her choice of cover. She could have taken a Galra fighter instead, but it would have taken time to rework the codes and come up with a cover story that made sense. And she would have had to imitate a Galra, which…ugh. But she'd have had a fighter rather than a clunky transport ship to blast her way out of the hangar and chase down that thief.

Allura maneuvered the ship out of dock, wincing at every laser bolt hitting her unprotected hull. Once she had enough vertical space, she mashed the controls, trying to force the ship into evasive contortions that would have been as natural as breathing for Blue. The ship shuddered under repeated blasts as sentries ran to nearby Galra fighters.

Too many doboshes later, Allura's ship leapt through the hangar doors and out into space. She clipped the edge of the rocky overhang obscuring the base hangar doors, causing a slide that would partially block the entrance and hopefully delay the other fighters. She regretted the damage to the ship, but she was fairly sure Matt would forgive her.

But when she saw the thief's fighter coming straight for her, she shrieked and rolled the ship hard to the right. The fighter flew past her, though, seemingly uninterested as it blasted a hole in the mountain, taking the hangar—and most of the sentries—out completely. Then it spiraled into space toward the giant curved edifice of Sala, the planet the base was orbiting.

Why would he go to Sala? There was ground, snow, and atmosphere but not much else. The reason the Galra had chosen Sala's moon for its base was because Sala was such a remote and barren planet.

Then a plume of smoke began streaming from the aft engine, and it suddenly became clear why he'd chosen his trajectory. But before Allura could decide on a relative course of action, her cruiser took fire from the few sentries still on their six. Her lone gun pointed forward, so she couldn't do much about the threat behind her. She shifted as much power to her rear energy shield as she dared and dived after the thief's fighter. Danger or not, she couldn't let him get away with the quintessence.

Entering the planet's atmosphere was far from fun. The bulkheads grew uncomfortably warm and the cockpit glass grew foggy with condensation. Allura punched commands into the antiquated ship's interface. The Castle might be 10,000 decaphebes old, but it was immeasurably more advanced and elegant than anything the rebels had.

Finally, she pulled through reentry and straight into heavy weather. She slipped through cloud banks, trying to confuse her pursuers' instruments even as she worked desperately to stay on the thief's tail. She didn't want to go through all this effort just to lose him in the snow.

It occurred to her that she should probably contact the rest of the paladins to let them know her location and current situation, but before she could send the message, her shield gave out and she took a direct hit. Fire spread in the aft cabin, but she couldn't put it out and follow the thief's fighter at the same time. She hoped he'd land soon so she could, too. That is, if neither of them crashed in the meantime.

Allura couldn't roll her cruiser in the turbulence. It was bottom heavy and not built with aerodynamics in mind. So she settled for ducking behind rocky promontories and weaving between laser blasts as best she could.

Only three sentries had managed to track them this far. And as she curved around a boulder, the closest one clipped its wing on the rock, sending it skittering into a cliff face opposite. The resulting crash into the chasm below left only two sentries to evade.

Reluctantly, Allura set her cruiser to autopilot and scooped up the fire suppressor from a wall compartment. She hated taking her eyes off her prey, even for a few ticks, but the fire had spread too far. If she didn't get it under control, she soon wouldn't have a ship to chase him with.

As she quickly doused the fire, she noticed a large cargo net folded neatly against the wall. After a moment's thought, she yanked it from its moorings and hustled back to the controls.

Checking to see she still had the thief in her sights, she yanked open the cargo doors. A whirlpool of wind nearly pulled her from her seat. She wrestled the pilot straps around her shoulders and across her lap, securing herself to the seat. Then stretching her arms up, she draped the cargo net around the back of her chair like a giant blanket.

Gripping both sides of the net in one hand, she turned off autopilot and slowed her breakneck speed just enough to get the second sentry lines up behind her. She took another laser hit, but it was worth it. Just as the sentry positioned its fighter to strike again, Allura let go of the cargo net.

The net swept backward, through the open cargo doors, and smacked the port hull close enough to the intake manifold to get sucked into the engine. With a horrible grinding noise, the port engine choked and the fighter fell right out of the sky.

"One to go," Allura said, closing the cargo doors and accelerating. But even as Zarkon's sentry closed in from behind, for five awful ticks, she lost sight of the thief.

Frantically scanning for heat signatures, she finally picked up sign of him again, far closer to the ground than he'd been moments before. His fighter must be pretty badly damaged. There was no indication of civilization that she'd noticed in the fifteen doboshes they'd been dodging rocks.

She angled down after him, ignoring the fighter behind her for the moment. She fought the controls, which were starting to lock up in the unfamiliar atmosphere. The thief's fighter faltered and fell, tumbling along the ground, end over end, until it slid to rest at the base of a mountain.

Before Allura could pull out of the dive, she lost control completely and skidded into the snow as well, coming to rest finally almost on top of the thief's fighter. The sentry banked hard to the right and came back around for another pass, detecting an easy victory.

Having just strapped herself in, Allura now scrambled to get out. She wrestled her way through a hole in the bulkhead and drew out her bayard. She'd only have one shot at this, and she'd never used her power this way before. She hadn't used her power at all in the months since Naxzela. She had no idea if it would even work. But she had to try something or the sentry, if it hadn't already, would relay their position to Zarkon's base.

Allura snapped her bayard into a whip. From the deep well in her mind, she drew on the power her father never told her she had, imagining it extending through her arm and into her bayard. Then she cracked the whip at the sentry's fighter when it passed. She felt more than saw the ripple of power, her power, slice diagonally through the ship, from just below the starboard wing to just above the port wing. A jagged cut halved the fighter, causing it to topple drunkenly into the same chasm that had claimed the first.

She watched its trajectory for half a tick before being wrenched around by her arm to face another attacker, probably the thief. She raised her whip, energy sparking along it with her rage.

"There's no time," her attacker said, pushing her into the shallow furrow made by their crashing ships.

She knew that voice, finally recognized that suit. The thief was—

Light registered first. Impossible light. Painful enough for her instincts to kick in. She moved between him and the explosion, instinctively throwing up her shield to block the impact. Her gauntlet took the brunt of the burn as the sheer force of the detonation pushed them both into the crater.

Snow vaporized around them, the rock turned ashy underneath where it didn't outright harden into black obsidian. If it weren't for the special ore powering her shield, both herself and her prisoner would have vaporized with the snow.

The intense pressure continued for several doboshes. Far longer than any normal explosion would have lasted. She felt her lungs struggling against the pressure to draw in oxygen. Felt her prisoner beneath her struggling with the same simple task. She was starting to lose consciousness. If the blast didn't end soon, they would both be dead.

And as soon as she though that, the pressure disappeared, causing her ears to pop painfully at the change in air pressure. She lay still, gaping like an aquatic animal for breath. She wanted to move, to gain advantage over her prisoner before he turned the tables, as Shiro often said. But he was just as stunned as she from the blast, breathing as hard, and not seeming inclined to move out from beneath her yet.

Her arms shaking, she finally managed to push herself up to a sitting position. Only then did she realize that her shield had disappeared, and her gauntlet—the same gauntlet holding the deactivation codes she'd stolen from the moon base—was scorched and completely dead.

"What in the name of Altea was that?" she gasped. "Why did it explode like that? What happened?"

"Raw quintessence fueled the blast," Prince Lotor said, his voice ragged as he coughed. "The canister cracked in the impact. I barely escaped before the fire in the ship's hold reached the container."

Allura cursed. At least no quintessence would end up in the black market. She had accomplished something. Though, since Prince Lotor was the thief, it likely hadn't been destined for the black market anyway.

"Not the sort of language I would have expected from you, Princess."

"How about this for language?" She growled at him, standing. "I, Princess Allura, Paladin of the Blue Lion, and leader of the Voltron Alliance, hereby place you, Prince of Galra, under arrest for crimes against the free peoples of the universe."

Prince Lotor raised his eyebrows at her. Then he pushed himself to his feet and stepped outside the crater they'd been lying in. Only when he moved away from her did she realize how bitterly cold it had become again in the aftermath of the explosion. New snow was already filling in the crater.

"Where do you think you're going? I've placed you under arrest."

"I am leaving the area before this little adventure attarcts unwanted visitors, but by all means, feel free to stay."

"I command you to stop!"

"Or you'll what, Princess—shame me to death?"

Allura gripped her bayard, intending to convert it into a whip again to bind the man if necessary, but the bayard remained dark and unresponsive. It must have been damaged in the blast as her gauntlet had been.

Prince Lotor resumed walking.

Allura followed. "We should stay near the wreckage so our teams can find us. We can reach them through my…" She trailed off, remembering that her gauntlet had been torched. She mentally chastised herself for not sending a transmission to Coran and the paladins when she'd thought of it earlier.

"What about you?" Allura asked. "Do your comms not work?"

"The explosion emitted an electromagnetic pulse powerful enough to disable all my equipment. Even if our ships were intact, they'd be useless."

"They'd give us shelter at least. And a point of reference for rescuers. No one will ever find us if we wander off into the wilderness."

"If there is a port with a transmitter, they might."

"You know the location of a port?" Allura said, hope rising.

"I know where a port once was. I haven't visited Sala in a thousand years. The port may still be there or it may not. But the odds for survival are marginally better if I head in that direction."

"You mean, if _we_ head in that direction."

"'We' isn't really in my vocabulary, Princess."

Allura had no doubt that was true.

"Nevertheless," she said, "odds of survival double if we stay together."

Prince Lotor started to respond but then stopped, as if thinking better of it. Then with a nod of acknowledgement, he turned west and started walking.

"How far is it?"

"Three days by foot, give or take, so we'd better get started."

"You said we."

"Apparently, your regrettable habits are already rubbing off on me."

"You are not that lucky," she said.


	2. Tactical Advantage

Lotor hated the way the icy tentacles of Salaan wind managed to slip through every chink of his armor—armor that, by the way, was supposedly sealed for surviving the black void of space. The wind on this backwater planet was more tenacious than space, it appeared.

Lotor also hated having to put up with the Altean princess who hadn't stopped chattering at him since he'd capitulated about working together to make it to the port, which might or might not be where he'd seen it last. She was as pernicious as the Salaan wind and just as annoying.

But most of all, Lotor hated the precious time he was wasting marooned on this forsaken rock of a planet when he needed to be stockpiling enough quintessence to get him to the alternate reality the comet had come from. Every delay could put him back years in his quest, and it galled him that this particular delay was caused by his own thoughtless idiocy in going back to rescue the rebel cruiser from his father's forces. If he hadn't gone back and gotten clipped by that stray laser bolt, he could have—

"How can you be sure we are going the right way?"

Lotor's shoulders tightened painfully. At this rate, they'd be all the way up to his ears by the time they reached the port. Still, he managed to refrain from delivering the acid response he wanted to. Arguing took energy neither of them could spare.

"It must be farentholds below the freezing point of water, accounting for the wind chill. Why don't you change into something warmer?"

Change into something warmer? Was that some sort of joke? Lotor whirled to lash her with that sarcastic comment after all, but shock stole his words as he took in her appearance. She indeed had changed into something warmer—'changed' as in transformed. She was roughly the same size and shape, but her features were flatter, her eyes narrower with a translucent lid covering them, and her skin had sprouted soft fur of a color that blended into the snow-white landscape.

"You look surprised," she observed. "Cannot you alter your body to better interact with your environment?"

"Of course, I can't alter my body. Galra don't do that. I don't know of any sentient species that has that ability."

"Alteans have. Had, I should say. And you…" She stopped herself, a lengthened canine carefully pinching her lower lip.

"And I what, Princess?"

"Well, I mean. I assumed you were Honerva's son as well as Zarkon's. You have Altean features and—"

"I am not Altean. I am Galra."

"Okay, okay." She held up her hands, which more closely resembled paws at the moment. It would be a useful ability, he had to admit. "I didn't mean to offend."

He snorted and turned on his heel, pressing on through the knee-high drifts.

"Maybe I should be offended that you are so offended," she muttered after a few too-short moments of silence.

"Must you talk at all?"

"Now I am definitely offended."

His shoulders tightened further, and he grumbled to himself to drown her out as he continued walking. At least she hadn't mentioned his grievous lapse in judgment in going back for her in the first place.

If he were a lucky person, he would hope that she just hadn't noticed. But he wasn't lucky, not in the slightest. And he never had been. He made success happen despite his fate, not because of it. Present situation included.

He sighed, warming his hands under his arms. The port could not appear on the horizon soon enough.

Half a varga later, they stopped to gather and melt snow for drinking.

"We won't have to worry about dehydration," the princess said, evidently having let go of their earlier standoff. "That's what Hunk calls a 'silver lining,' though I don't really understand why. Apparently, it has something to do with weather patterns, but also a good thing inside of a bad? Earthlings are very odd."

"Talking wastes energy," he said. Well, grunted was probably more accurate. He was trying to conserve, after all.

"Talking is the only thing keeping me from foaming at the mouth."

He couldn't help but laugh at that. Anyone would. He wasn't weak.

"Thank you for that mental image," he said. "I will treasure it always."

"I live to serve, my lord," she said, rolling her eyes.

"What do you have for rations?" he asked after enough snow had melted for the pair of them to drink and store a liter each in their suit reservoirs.

"Not much," she admitted ruefully. "Four bars of protein and three packets of freeze-dried strawberries."

"Strawberries?"

"They're an Earth delicacy."

"They sound wretched."

"I wasn't planning on sharing."

Lotor found that he rather liked her lack of fear of him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd met someone who knew who he was and yet was perfectly comfortable thwarting and needling him. Even his father was a little afraid of him. But this random princess from an extinct race wasn't afraid of him in the slightest. He should try to change that. He should. But maybe it could wait until they were off planet.

"We should keep moving—cover more ground before nightfall," he said. "If you think this is cold, wait until the sun goes down."

The princess shuddered. "Do you have any rations?"

"Of course."

"How much?"

"Enough to last me three days."

"I may need to borrow some."

"Borrow some?" he said, incredulously. He may need to inspire proper fear more immediately after all.

"This body requires higher caloric intake to maintain heat levels. Four bars of protein might last me half a day."

He stared at her, thinking she must be joking this time. But she simply stared back, waiting.

"Unbelievable," he said, pulling a slightly mashed regthu pouch from the utility compartment just over his ribs.

She took it from him, smiling (at it more than him), but she didn't have the dexterity to remove the cap with her transformed paws. She handed it back, sheepishly.

Lotor sighed as he popped the cap and passed it to her again. She slurped the contents and belched when finished. Then she had the nerve to give the empty pouch back to him. He took it from her paw and buried it beneath the snow.

The princess volunteered to break their trail for a while. Lotor didn't love this idea. She didn't know where she was going, for one thing. For another, she didn't know the warning signs to watch for—the cracks in the crests of drifts that heralded hidden crevasses, the slithery tracks that indicated a nearby pack of hunting koti, any of a million other hazards that Lotor barely remembered himself after a thousand-year absence from the planet. He could hardly expect a person sleeping for the greater part of ten thousand years to have the slightest idea how to interpret impending danger. But her body adjustments did make her better equipped to break through the crusty surface of the snow, and he would need to give himself breaks whenever possible if he wanted to make it to the port on half-rations.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked over her shoulder after twenty glorious doboshes of leaving him to his own thoughts.

"No."

"Why did you go back?"

"Back where?"

"Back to the base. You had a strong lead and the sentries' focus was torn between our two ships. You could have easily jumped away, but you came back. You finished what I couldn't—you blocked the hangar exit so only the sentries who were already out could engage. There was no tactical advantage for you to do that. So why? Why did you come back?"

So she had noticed. Wonderful. He wasn't sure he should answer the question at all, let alone how to do so if he did. He remained silent for several doboshes as he thought about it. In the end, he decided that honesty probably wouldn't hurt his long-term plans.

"I recognized your ship as a rebel cruiser. Not everything is about tactical advantage."

It wasn't a complete explanation, but it would suffice. He had no motive to manipulate her, so he didn't really care what effect his answer had on her. Besides, every time he opened his mouth, ice coated his tongue, making pronunciation difficult. The last thing he wanted to do was debate with her the finer points of strategy versus instinct.

His answer, brief as it was, seemed to satisfy her curiosity, though. She didn't say another word to him for the rest of the afternoon.


	3. Predictions

A million years after leaving the crash site, Allura finally called a halt for the day, having spotted a leeward depression in an outcropping not too far off route. It wouldn't keep the wind out completely, but it was better than sleeping in a drift all night. And her energy stores were greatly depleted by her continued transformation. She needed shelter so she could relax her body back into her natural form.

"We should take advantage of the good weather," Prince Lotor said. "We may not have it as easy tomorrow."

"You call this easy?"

"By comparison, yes. Snowstorms are common on this side of the planet. We are lucky that we crashed here during summer."

"We can't predict what will happen with the weather. We _can_ predict that without proper rest, we will not be able to protect ourselves or adequately restock our energy reserves. We can also appreciate that shelter is rare here, and may not be available when we run out of energy half a varga from now. I vote for sleep."

"Fair enough assessment, I suppose." And he altered his route to follow hers toward the outcropping.

At first, Allura tried to use her paws to dig to the bare ground, but once Prince Lotor caught on to her plan, he stopped her.

"We need a wider depression, not a deeper one. You won't reach rock digging by hand. There are far too many fathoms of snow between us and this mountain."

From another hidden compartment in his suit, he pulled out two reflective squares that when unfolded became self-warming blankets. He handed one to Allura, and she took it with chagrin. She and the other paladins were scantily equipped for emergencies. She made a mental note to ask Coran and Hunk to modify their suits. Water reservoirs were not enough to survive every situation.

Lotor also pulled out another co'l packet, which he'd used earlier to melt snow for drinking water. On top of the small circle of rocks she'd clawed from the outcropping, he dumped the contents of the packet, igniting a pitifully small but still very much welcome fire.

"I continue to be amazed at how prepared your suit is for our circumstances," Allura said, pressing her hands as close to the blue flame as she could tolerate. "It is almost as if it predicted this would happen."

Prince Lotor smiled. "As I continue to be amazed that the pilots of the most fearsome weapon in the universe fail to equip themselves for a single hostile condition of any kind. It's a miracle you have all survived this long."

"Well, you are not wrong. This is a lesson learned, I assure you."

Allura wrapped the foil blanket around herself and shrunk back into her normal form. The heat generated from the transformation immediately suffused her cocoon with warmth, and she settled in as best she could.

She already missed the fur on her face. The foil wrap did not reach the top of her head, nor did it seal around her throat, so puffs of snow still struck her skin and trickled down as ice water into the under layer of her suit. Not that she was complaining. She'd rather have the wrap than all the treasure in her father's castle at the moment.

Allura glanced up and caught the prince carefully not assessing her. She could sense his attention on her, but his eyes were continuously directed elsewhere—the fire, the outcropping, some vague point on the darkened horizon. She recognized it instantly for what it was: a burning question going unanswered.

"It's better if you just ask," Allura said finally, too exhausted by the events of the day to draw it out of him gently. "Trust me, I was born under an inquisitive star."

"I had noticed that, Princess. But I am not accustomed to indulging in irrelevant curiosity."

"But how can you know it will always be irrelevant? Can you tell the future? If so, can you show me how?" The last she said in a whisper to tease him into smiling again.

She liked being able to make him smile. It seemed like a sort of victory over him, because he smiled so seldom on his own. It was as if he'd intentionally trained himself to scowl instead, and every smile was a mission failed.

She enjoyed the small sip of power it gave her, because until now, he'd been the one providing supplies and could therefore direct their progress. She didn't like the power dynamic that entailed, especially since the last time they'd met, the power differential had been the opposite.

Allura was rewarded with a small smile and a tilt of the head, an acknowledgement of a point won.

"Perhaps you are right. But I hesitate because I do not wish to appear rude."

He didn't wish to appear rude? Allura blinked. _Since when?_ sat heavy on her tongue, but she swallowed it. Far be it from her to incite rudeness if he had determined not to use it, for the moment at least. She held no illusions that he would restrain himself in the future.

"It is far too late now," she said instead. "Ask, and I promise not to be offended."

He sighed but yielded the argument.

"How do you…change?" he said finally.

"Is that all?" Allura said, chuckling. "It is simple biology. Alteans have a special layer of cells just below the epithelial layer called the iridophorial layer. The iridophore cells contain nanocrystals of different shapes, sizes, and organizations that—"

"No, I mean, how do you make it happen?"

"Oh, um…I'm not sure, actually. It's like asking someone how they make themselves blink. I just think about it, and then it happens."

"Can you take any shape you want?"

"Yes and no. There are limits. I cannot change size or shape too radically from my normal form. Colors are easier than growing fur, for example. To give you an idea, I was attempting to mimic the shape of a wyvryn from Ga'm-5, which, as you know, has an extra set of arms and fur that grows a span or more in length. My body could only roughly estimate that."

"I see," he said, hesitating only slightly this time before adding, "why did you change back just now? The night will only bring a drop in temperature."

"I can only assume a shape so long before depleting too much of my energy. I have never held a shape as long as I did today, and I engaged in some fairly rigorous activity with little food. I am about done in, as Pidge says." She yawned, her jaw creaking to make the point.

"Does it hurt to change back and forth?"

"Not at all. It is just a part of who I am. Who we are." She could see that her answer meant something but she couldn't tell what. "Why do you ask?"

Prince Lotor shrugged. "It just seems that everything worth having in this reality requires some amount of pain."

Allura stared at him, speechless. For the first time, she imagined what his life must have been like, growing up with a father whose sole concern was expanding his empire and decimating his enemies. Could a ruler so damaged by quintessence, so obsessed and corrupted by power, possibly show love and compassion to a child? And what of Honerva? Did she even remember she had a son?

"Not everything," she said quietly. "Some things are simply gifts."

He half smiled at that, as if amused by her naïveté. But her heart melted just a little, knowing that, in this at least, she had the greater knowledge.

"Sleep well, Princess."

"Actually, I would prefer to take the first watch."

"It is unnecessary. I am capable of going several quintants without sleep."

"How nice for you," Allura said sardonically. "I would still like to take the first watch."

He looked for a moment as if he might ask why, but finally he said, "as you wish, Princess," and rolled over in his foil blanket to face away from her.

She sighed and settled further into her own blanket, tucking the corners as tight as she could under her chin. She wished she could settle her internal conflict as easily.

She knew she couldn't trust the prince, but she empathized with him—or part of him, anyway—and that wasn't an easy thing for her to ignore. She was hardwired to hate Zarkon and to defend anyone hurt by his megalomaniacal pursuit of power. Figuring out where his son fit on that continuum was going to be harder than Allura thought.

She did have one more question. A question that had been burning a hole through her brain all day.

"Why did you destroy Honerva's ship and save us only to walk away from the alliance?"

"What?" he answered sleepily, rolling onto his back.

"The alliance. If you would help a rebel ship, proactively involve yourself in the battle of Naxzela for our benefit, then why did you not follow through? We were in the middle of negotiating, and you just disappeared."

Prince Lotor sighed, staring at the darkness above their heads.

"I am not a fool, Princess. I saw the Blade of Marmora gripping his knife, the council's guard positioned at the exits, the downcast eyes of the negotiator, all signaling a mere semblance of diplomacy. The only thing holding them in check was their respect for you and the black paladin, or more specifically, for their yearning to belong to the universe you envision, a fantasy of justice and redemption. They want what you symbolize, and deep down they know they cannot have it if you disapprove their actions."

Allura laughed, hard and brittle. He was a fool if he believed that.

"That's not even close to the truth. I have to beg them to see reason. We have to compromise all the time."

"It is true, Princess, though they barely realize it themselves."

"Regardless, that's not an answer. You had to expect the alliance wouldn't welcome you with open arms."

"You are right, of course."

"Then why did you leave? You couldn't have been afraid of a handful of guards, even if one of them was Marmora."

Prince Lotor added another co'l packet to the fire, the embers glowing blue for a moment as it ignited. He seemed unlikely to answer, which was fine she supposed. It was only curiosity that compelled her to ask in the first place. She didn't need to know why he'd left to know that he had and therefore shouldn't be trusted.

"It was a test," he said finally, surprising her. He seemed to be doing that a lot.

"Did we pass?" she asked, flatly.

He smiled. "Not that kind of test. I wanted to know what I was dealing with: what your strengths were, who your generals were. I was gathering intelligence that might prove useful."

"That's it? That's the reason you saved us at Naxzela? For a fact-finding opportunity?"

"No," he said, eyes still fixed at the sky. "The reason I saved you at Naxzela was to thwart my father. A thriving rebellion helps my plans, so I will help the rebellion when it makes sense for me to do so. The fact-finding mission was a side benefit."

Allura stared at him, horrified and a little impressed. It was as if he had no Altean in him at all. And yet, it seemed his pain was real. Did he honestly believe he lived in a universe of only enemies? Allura couldn't imagine what that must be like. He couldn't be right, could he? Maybe he did live in a universe where everyone wanted him dead.

When she spoke next, she was thinking of Blue. "The universe has a way of becoming exactly what we imagine it to be."

He didn't respond. They had been talking about the rebellion, after all. Perhaps her comment had seemed disconnected from the conversation. But it connected. It all did. That was the first lesson she'd ever learned from her father.

"Good night, Prince of Galra," she said and let it go.


	4. Herald of a Storm

Lotor took the knife from his belt and began sawing the packed snow into a rough block, dribbling water from his reservoir on it as he went. When he had detached it from the ground, he added it to the other ice bricks he'd created over the last three vargas while Princess Allura slept. She had kept watch half the night and finally woken him with a single touch, yawning against the back of her other hand, the air cold and deceptively clear around them. Lotor recognized it for what it was—the herald of a storm.

He hadn't told her, because he didn't need her help to build a shelter. He had time. He willed it to be a passing storm, rather than the weeks-long storms that Sala was famous for. A day of storm they could live through, but longer than that and they'd run out of rations. Lotor didn't want to have to eat the princess, but he would if it were mission imperative. His duty came first. Always.

The oddness of the thought caught him off guard, though. It was a subtle enough distinction that he almost missed it. _He didn't want to have to eat the princess_ … It was more than just the inconvenience, the mess, the fallout from the other Voltron paladins, the distasteful nature of eating another sentient being. He didn't want to eat _her_ specifically. Because, apparently, despite how much her incessant prattling and unapologetic optimism annoyed him, he was growing inexplicably fond of her.

Well, that was unacceptable. He refocused his attention on the work in front of him, and eradicated all notions of liking the princess. He would eat her if he had to and be done.

Another varga later, he'd created a sturdy enough wall of ice blocking the worst of the wind. He moved over to the princess's side of the shelter to start building a wall there as well. Now that he'd recognized her as a potential food source, it was obviously to his benefit to see to her current survival as well.

The swirling snow had intensified with the wind, and a small drift had settled on top of the princess while she slept. She stirred, causing a miniature avalanche as she woke.

"What…what are you doing?" she asked blinking slowly. The drop in temperature was already affecting her. It was probably best that she wake up and get moving.

"There's a storm coming," he said. "I'm building a better shelter before we get buried in snow."

"What?" she said, struggling out of her blanket and to her feet. "We can't stay here. We have to keep moving."

"I'm sorry, Princess. Your plans will have to wait a quintant."

"A quintant?" she squeaked. "We can't afford to wait even a varga. We don't have the rations to wait a whole quintant!"

"If we're lucky, a quintant is all it will be. Either way, we cannot travel in a Salaan storm with no protection and no supplies. We would die within a varga."

She sank back against the rocky outcropping, her face contorted with disappointment. "You don't understand. I have to get back. Every delay costs lives."

"The universe survived for ten thousand years without Voltron. I feel certain the paladins can keep it from imploding until your return."

She sighed heavily. "It's not that. It's…"

"It's what, Princess?"

"Never mind. I…I just have to get back. As soon as possible."

Lotor turned abruptly back to his work. He didn't have the patience for coddling whiny rebel royals. He wanted just as badly to get off this black hole of a planet, but he accepted the situation and did what was needed.

"I apologize," she said. "I know it's not your fault. I just…" She bit her lip, then pushed away from the rock wall, folded her blanket into its original square, and said, "What can I do to help? I've never built an ice shelter before."

Wordlessly, he handed her his knife and started stacking the bricks he'd made for her side before waking her. She nodded and started carving.

Three vargas later, they had more of a shelter—still not complete, but it arced over them, diverted the wind, and enclosed the warmth from the co'l packets to some extent. He'd have to be more judicious with the packets now that they were a quintant behind. He didn't want to alert the princess to his concerns, but he wasn't as confident they would make it to the port as he made it seem. They had no choice but to try, so it wasn't worth bringing up his reservations. But the truth was, their odds were getting smaller every dobosh the storm raged outside.

"Talk to me," the princess said, not looking up from her pensive study of the blue co'l flame. "Talk to me about something or I'll go mad."

"What do you wish to—"

"I don't care. Anything. Tell me about your childhood."

"My—? Why would you want to hear about that?"

"It was the first thing I thought of. Tell me what it was like. Or don't, if you'd rather talk about something else."

What could he tell her? That he was raised more by sentries and quintessence than his own father? That every expectation he didn't meet fast enough was a black mark against him, never mind that he met every expectation eventually, and most more quickly than any other fighter, commander, and tactician in the Galra army? He was fifteen when he finally realized that he'd never earn his father's approval. He was three hundred and ninety-seven before he finally stopped trying. He was older than that—regrettably, far older—when he finally turned against his father entirely.

"I don't think the word 'childhood' is an accurate descriptor for my early years. 'Apprenticeship' might be closer to the experience. In any case, I barely remember it. To say it was long ago is to do the concept of time a grave injustice."

"I remember mine as if it were yesterday," she said wistfully. "My father used to... Well. He was a good man."

"You miss him." Lotor felt the truth of it as he said it, though it puzzled him. He couldn't imagine any emotion connected with the loss of his father beyond relief.

"I do," she said, her eyes glistening in the firelight.

Lotor looked away. He felt a strange emotion of his own, a desire to protect, to reassure, to heal. He didn't like it. At all. He cast about for an alternate conversational topic—anything to derail the current conversation.

"What were you doing at the moon base yesterday? Were you there to intercept me? If so, how did you know I would be there?"

He tried to soften the questions, to not sound accusatory, but he clearly failed if her responding glare was anything to go by.

"My mission had nothing to do with you or quintessence. Though, now that you bring it up, I'd dearly love to know what you were planning to do with that much raw quintessence."

"I asked you first," he said, belatedly adding a smile in an effort to restore the spirit of camaraderie that they'd been operating under the last twenty-four vargas.

Her expression said she wasn't buying it.

"Not that I have to tell you anything, but I guess it doesn't make any difference now." She held up her arm as if it held some meaning. "I was supposed to get the disarming codes for the Naxzela bombs buried beneath the surface of several of Zarkon's key outposts. I got them, but our adventure with exploding quintessence melted my gauntlet and the disarming codes with it."

"May I?" Lotor held out his hand for the gauntlet. Surprised, the princess detached it from her suit and handed it to him. "I cannot promise I can fix it, especially without replacement parts. But I have some experience with telecommunications technology from my assignment in the Yaldresh quadrant."

"Thank you," she said. "We must protect our people in those sectors."

"If I'm not mistaken, the Galra still control the majority of worlds where bomb networks of the type used on Naxzela are employed."

"You are not mistaken. They do still hold control. But the rebellion is establishing a network in the bigger cities, undermining from within." The princess covered her face with her hand. "Why am I telling you all this?" She laughed mirthlessly. "I must really think we're about to die."

"Come now, Princess," Lotor said, his eyes flicking up briefly from his work on the singed wires beneath the gauntlet's interface. "You have been in worse predicaments than being momentarily stranded on an ice planet. In fact, I believe I myself have put you in one or two of those situations. In recent memory."

She laughed again through her fingers as she let her hand fall—this time it was a genuine laugh. "I suppose you are right."

The gauntlet proved a challenge. It had been thousands of years since his training on Yaldresh-4. And the gauntlet itself was of a technology he'd never seen before. It was more art-form than programming, yet something about it felt familiar. Regardless, it was a far cry from the pragmatic nuts-and-bolts of Galra technology. He was confident he would not be able to repair the communications functionality without access to new wiring and a solder iron. But the memory chip seemed only minimally damaged. If he could reroute some of the power from the communications hardware, he might be able to recover some of the data from the chip.

"Your turn," she said.

"Hmmm?"

"It's your turn to confess to your crimes against the empire. Why were you stealing that quintessence? And while we're on the subject, why are you Galra enemy number-one right now? Zarkon can't be that angry with how you ran things while he was recovering, can he?"

Lotor did not look up as he answered. "Zarkon is angry with a lot of things, not the least of which is the fact that having a child at all means he is destined to be replaced someday."

He felt the princess's silence after this revelation as oppressive pity, whether she meant it that way or not. It bothered him that she would consider him pitiful in any capacity, but it should not have, and he did his best to ignore that it did.

"Zarkon senses my treachery, though he does not yet officially know it's full extent. Honerva has always suspected, even before I came to the decision myself. But she was born paranoid, I'm fairly sure."

"I don't understand," the princess said.

"I don't expect you to."

"Don't patronize me. I'm not as ignorant of the machinations of politics as you assume. And I know Zarkon's history, his obsession with quintessence. Is that what you were trying to do? Reduce his access to quintessence?"

"If that were all, what I stole would be but a drop in the ocean of the amount of quintessence my father has access to. I had much more planned for that quintessence, but it's gone now. I will have to try again to get more from another remote base. Please, do me a favor, and do _not_ show up while I am there."

Princess Allura smiled slightly at that. "I make no promises."

Lotor smiled back, but he didn't really take her seriously. The likelihood that she'd actually end up at the same base as him at the same time again was negligible.

"So then why did you take the quintessence? Why bother risking it? Are you obsessed with it as well?"

"Yes and no," Lotor said. "Honerva has been dosing me with quintessence since my childhood, so I have built up a tolerance for it, and it has extended my life the way it has Zarkon's and Honerva's. Without it, I'm not sure what would happen to me. But I am not as dependent on it as my father. As I get older, I go longer and longer between doses. The longest I've gone without quintessence is ten years. Each time, I go longer without, and I feel few ill affects."

"Then why steal it? If it's not to prevent your father from having it and not in order to have it for yourself, then why take it? Why risk so much?"

"I need it for my own purposes, just not for myself. I am using it to end Zarkon's rule of the universe, and that is all I am willing to say on the subject."

"So you can take over?"

Lotor shook his head, still engaged fully in his work on the gauntlet. "I have no desire to rule a bloated empire on the verge of collapse. Or any empire at all, for that matter."

"What do you want?"

 _Freedom_.

For a tick, he was afraid he'd said the answer out loud. When he realized she was still waiting expectantly, he let out an inaudible sigh of relief.

"Balance," he said instead. "The universe is slowly but inexorably tumbling into chaos and ruin. My father's obsession is sucking this reality dry, hastening entropy rather than forestalling it."

"You want to kill him," the princess breathed in a flash of insight, her eyes wide.

But Lotor shook his head again. "I don't want to kill them. I want to make them mortal again. And if doing so kills them, then…I am content with that."

"Make them mortal? But why? What effect would that accomplish that is worth the amount of effort and danger required of you to make it so? And how would you even go about it?"

Lotor had thought so much about this. For centuries, he'd plotted and failed and plotted more, until the only option remaining to him became clear: the only way to stop his father was to give him exactly what he wanted. But Lotor wasn't about to tell a paladin of Voltron that. He could answer the why, though. He shouldn't, but he could.

"From whichever perspective you assess the symptoms of strife, unrest, and instability in this universe, the root cause of it is the unnaturally long life of my family."

Her eyes widened further, and she opened her mouth to say something. He quickly interrupted her.

"Don't misunderstand, Princess. This is not altruism. I am not and never will be a hero. I just recognize a losing strategy when I see one."

She relinquished whatever she had been about to say and fell into silence, for which Lotor was profoundly grateful. She was far too inquisitive for his liking, and every wrong assumption on her part needled him to correct it, for some reason. He was starting to become uneasy, almost afraid that spending much more time in her company would lead to him confessing every facet of his plan to break through the trans-reality portal and accomplish what his father had never managed to.

He couldn't tell her, though. The alliance would never allow him to continue, and he didn't blame them. But it was the only way to bring down Zarkon. He knew it with a certainty that only a person as close to Zarkon as a son and as long-lived and experienced as he was could have. Zarkon's greatest desire would be the instrument of his downfall, and the only way to hasten the second was to grant him the first.

A few more doboshes of blessed silence, and Lotor was able to coax the gauntlet's display to light up. Finally. He was grateful for the win, no matter how small.

He handed it back to her with a triumphant smirk.

"You fixed it?" Allura shrieked, her face glowing with sudden joy as she grabbed the gauntlet and clicked it back into its place on her suit.

"Not entirely," he cautioned. "The connections to subspace are still nonfunctioning, so we cannot call for rescue. But I believe you'll be able to access your—"

She squealed with delight as a set of glowing numbers appeared in the air above her gauntlet. "These are the codes I was telling you about! They're all still here!"

Then she threw herself across the enclosure at him.

He instinctively flew into a defensive crouch, arms raised. But before he could scan for whatever oncoming threat she was fleeing, he had arms full of princess that he had no idea what to do with. She had circled her arms around him and was crushing his rib cage. Was she attacking him? If so, it was the most bizarre attack he'd ever seen. And it didn't hurt. It almost felt…nice.

"What are you doing?" he asked finally.

She laughed. "I'm hugging you, obviously."

"Hugging? Why?"

She pulled back to look at him. "To thank you. You fixed my gauntlet." She held her arm up again for him to inspect, as if he could have somehow missed that detail. "And saved a lot of good people. Well, assuming we can get off this hateful crater sometime soon."

Lotor felt very uncomfortable. This was not how this mission was supposed to go. Every time he thought he had a hold of it, it slid further away from his control.

"Do you mind going back to your side?" he asked.

She laughed again. She did that a lot. "Of course. Sorry, I got carried away."

"It's all right. Just…no more hugging."

The sound of her laughter rebounded from the ice above them and sailed out into the storm.


	5. Snow Battles

Allura awoke to a drip-drip-drip of water onto her shoulder. She was so lethargic that she didn't remember at first where she was. She assumed in her bemusement that the castle wall had somehow sprung a leak. She nearly called out for Coran before the cold seeping into her cocoon reminded her of where she actually was.

She sat up quickly, looking for Lotor, but he wasn't there.

She swore as she got to her feet, tangling in and almost tripping over the foil blanket in her haste. Had he abandoned her after everything? She knew she couldn't trust him. But he'd fixed her gauntlet. Likely just to pass the time, but still. She cursed herself silently for letting her guard down.

Then she noticed the bright sunshine spilling into the enclosure. The storm was gone. She quickly folded the blanket and doused the co'l packet. Perhaps there would be enough fuel in it left to reuse it. Though she fully intended to catch up with the traitor prince. He couldn't have gotten too far. It wasn't much past dawn.

"Princess, are you awake?"

Allura jumped in surprise and hit her head on the low, ice-brick ceiling above her. She rubbed her scalp gently, wincing.

"Yes, I'm awake."

Perhaps she had misjudged him. Slightly.

"I thought you had left," she admitted, emerging into the blinding daylight.

"Well, I didn't," he said, pointing out the obvious. "Wasn't it you who said we have to work together to survive?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean you agree with me," she said, albeit with a tinge of chagrin.

"As it happens, I do agree with you. I just walked outside to get our bearings."

"Oh. That's helpful, I suppose."

"Indeed."

Allura busied herself eating a bar of protein and stowing her foil blanket in her suit, studiously not looking at her companion.

"You really thought I would leave?" he asked.

Allura didn't know what to say. She felt guilty, as if she had unwittingly hurt his feelings. "It would make sense if you did leave. I do not know how or when to build a shelter of ice. I do not know where any ports are. I don't even have enough rations to last another day on my own. On top of which, we are not even allies. Even I would leave me if I were you."

Lotor stepped in close enough for her to feel the heat of his breath on her skin, though she shivered under its warmth.

"First of all, no, you would not. Second, neither would I."

The intensity of his gaze liquified Allura's insides. She had a vague sense that she was gaping at him like a glorksnak, but she couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from his.

"Now, can we stop talking about this?" he asked, coldly.

She nodded, lightheaded and relieved when he stepped back again.

"How much further to the port?" she asked, her voice husky.

"I'd estimate another quintant at least," he answered turning back to his own preparations.

Allura took advantage of his distraction to regain her composure.

"You might want to shift back into your wyvryn shape," he continued as he bent to one knee to refill his water reservoir. His hair, shaggy and unkempt draped over his shoulder as he worked. She considered offering him one of her hair ties. She might be terribly prepared provisions wise, but she had at least two extra hair ties on her person at all times. "The temperature has dropped a few degrees since the storm."

"I can't," she replied. "It requires too much energy. I'll be fine as long as we keep moving."

With a nod, Lotor set off toward a distant set of mountains that Allura had not noticed the previous day.

"Will we have to cross those?" Allura asked, trying not to sound as dismayed as she felt.

"No," he answered. "The port is at the base of a glacier much closer to our position than that."

Allura let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Thank the stars," she said. "I was afraid I was going to have to eat you."

Lotor stopped and turned to her with an incredulous look. Then he laughed. He actually laughed. Full throated and suffused with amusement. It lit up his face, and subsequently, as though the laugh were virus, Allura felt her own lips stretching into a smile as well. When he stopped he said simply, "You could try, Princess. I imagine I'd be fairly tough and gamey."

Allura chuckled back. "I'd no doubt have to hold my nose, but I've eaten a _milkshake_ , and you don't even want to know what that is."

And just like that, the air had cleared between them, and they were back to their sibling-like bantering. The morning flew by quickly, and they made excellent headway, spirits high. Allura almost didn't notice the cold. Okay, that was a lie. She would never _not_ notice the cold again, whether she got off this ice rock or not. But she was having—dare she say it—fun. So of course, something was doomed to ruin it.

In the early afternoon, they stopped for a midday meal. Well, it was more a pitiful excuse for a snack than a meal, but neither complained. Allura drank extra water to appease her rumbling stomach. It wasn't as effective a solution as she'd have liked it to be, but it was better than nothing.

Over the course of the morning, Lotor had become almost a different version of himself entirely. Smiles came more easily to his face and his acerbic wit assumed a less biting, more teasing edge as they trudged through the snowfall. So an impish idea took hold of her mind, and she decided to take a chance and indulge it.

She gradually allowed herself to fall far enough behind Lotor to be out of his peripheral vision. Then she scooped up a glove-full of snow and packed it into a tight ball, the way Lance had shown her during a supply run on Klexa Prime. He and Keith, neither of whom particularly liked the other even on their best days, nevertheless engaged in the seeming proto-battle with wide smiles and wild laughter. Perhaps, since Lotor and herself were similarly situated to each other as Keith and Lance were, they would also enjoy a melee of snow.

Before she could give herself enough time to think better of it, Allura patted the ball once more and called out to her companion.

"Prince of Galra, I challenge you to a duel!"

She waited until he turned; then she let fly with the snow straight at his too-perfect face. Direct hit! His right cheek covered with snow was already starting to redden slightly from the wet and cold. Allura laughed, thrilled to have surprised him for once.

Laughter turned quickly to squeals of alarm as he bent to arm himself in reciprocal response. Too late, she remembered there was no cover and way too much ammunition on the endless Salaan plain. She dodged his first ball of snow, but not his second, third, or fourth.

Giggling hysterically, she fired back as good as she got, making sure to target his neck specifically, as it was the absolute worst when snow melted and was absorbed into her suit's cloth lining. She assumed it was the same for him.

Eventually, she gave up lobbing missiles and tackled him straight into the snow. They wrestled for dominance. He fought like a snake, slippery and sneaky, his body hard with muscle and bone but still somehow unnaturally elusive and unpredictable. His limbs were never where she expected them to be.

Finally, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and clung like a sucker vine from the underwater forests of Galaspriel, burying her face in his chest so he couldn't attack her stinging skin with more snow.

Laughing, he lay still. She loved feeling as well as hearing the rumble in his chest. _Loved?_ Wait. What?

"All right, princess, I yield! Clearly, you are the superior fighter."

She scrambled off him, hiding her confusion behind a smile of tactical triumph. Then, because she was a gallant winner, she extended her hand to help him up. Surprisingly, he took it.

"You won't expend energy to keep yourself warm, but you will to best me in a child's game."

Allura shrugged haughtily. "I don't know what you expended, but I didn't use any energy just now."

His response was interrupted by an eerie cry racing across the icy field. High-pitched and piercing, it was joined by another, and then another—each laying across the previous like a chorus, culminating in an ocean of sound. But there was nothing. The sound was coming from nowhere.

Lotor drew his sword, whirling into a fighting stance at the first howl.

"What is it?" Allura asked, clutching the air where her bayard should have been.

"Be ready," he answered.

"Ready for—"

Before she could finish her thought, the crystal swarm was upon them. Creatures with six legs and multicolored crystals where fur should be launched themselves at Allura and Lotor. Allura raised her gauntlet, and the shield apparatus, which Lotor seemed to have fixed as well, just managed to deflect her first attacker. Yet another favor she owed her unconventional ally.

Instinctively, she circled to position her back opposite Lotor's. Without speaking, they moved in concert, Allura shielding his flank as he hacked at the creatures, his sword a blur of death and dismemberment. Though Allura had never seen anyone fight with such precision and speed, she could tell they were losing ground. There were just too many of the creatures for them to fend off for long.

Allura cast about feverishly in her mind for a solution. Her bayard was damaged, there was nothing but snow all around. No weapons she could improvise. Then she remembered Lotor's knife. The one she'd used to cut ice bricks with the day before. As she shoved off a creature with her shield, she took the opportunity to pull the knife from the compartment she'd stowed it in. It wasn't much—a hand in length, if that. But if she used it to focus her power, she might have a chance at turning the tide.

She took a risk and closed her eyes, steadying her emotions. Her power hovered on the edge of her ability to sense it. She was never certain if it would come when she called or how it would manifest when she did. But too much was at stake for her to let it stop her.

She opened her eyes again just in time to register an open maw spewing saliva and hot breath on her at nearly eye level. Lotor slammed the flat of his sword into its side, clubbing it out of the way just before it clamped its jaws on her neck, though he did so awkwardly.

"What are you _doing_?" he seethed, squatting to catch another attack at just the right angle to launch the creature into the air.

Instead of answering, Allura raised the knife, power coursing down her arm and out through the blade. The weapon lengthened, both shaft and blade, into a glowing javelin. Her focus narrowed to a point. She targeted a single creature a few lengths away and threw with all her strength.

The javelin's blade buried itself deep into the creature's side. Then a disc of light shot out from the javelin's center of gravity, disintegrating all creatures in its path. The light dissipated just before reaching Lotor.

The remaining creatures, having decided their prey was not worth the death toll, retreated into the snow drifts from whence they'd come.

"What in the name of Galra was that?" Lotor asked, breathing heavy, hair slicked with sweat.

Allura took a shuddering breath herself. If she hadn't been tired after the snow fight, she was tired now.

"I don't know, to be honest. Something I can do."

"Because of your Altean heritage?"

Allura shook her head. "I don't know. I didn't know I could do it until recently. When I fought your—when I fought Honerva." She raised a hand to her cheek. It felt strangely hot, considering the climate. "So many questions my father never answered. So many questions I have no one to ask."

"Because of Zarkon."

"It's not as simple as that. It could be the castle or the quintessence in the lions or who knows what else interfering with my biology."

"You could ask Honerva."

"Right," Allura said, sardonically. "We could have a chat about it over tea."

"I could ask—"

But Allura waved him to silence. "I doubt she even remembers that she is Altean. It doesn't matter anyway. The creatures are gone, and we have to keep moving."

Lotor looked as if he was about to argue the point further, but instead, he muttered a clipped, "Of course," and turned to go.

"Wait. I have to find the knife."

But when Allura arrived at the spot she could have sworn she'd speared the crystalline creature, there was no sign of the knife. It must have disintegrated with the animal, she thought.

Lotor appeared at her elbow, extending another knife to her, hilt first, without comment.

"Thank you," she said, taking it gently from him. "How many of these do you have?"

"Enough," he grunted. Then he turned and began the trek forward into the unbroken snow, shoulders tense and perpetual glower firmly in place.

Allura sighed and stowed her new knife. So much for camaraderie.


	6. Crevasse

Lotor felt the gnawing of hunger at the back of his mind like a fly hovering just outside his peripheral vision. If his conditioning was no longer able to shut out the sensation entirely, then his body must be starting to cannibalize the amino acids in his muscles. They needed food and fast.

He. _He_ needed food fast. He also needed to stop thinking of himself and the paladin as a team. Once this misadventure was behind him, he would go back to his mission, and the paladin would go back to hers.

She had been unusually quiet since the koti attack the day before. When they'd finally called a stop for the night, she had fallen into an exhausted but troubled sleep almost immediately. Rather than waking her, he'd let her sleep until she woke on her own three vargas before dawn. She'd been irritated that he'd let her sleep so long, but she hadn't been able hide the hint of gratitude evident in her expression as well.

He hadn't responded when she'd admonished him for taking the longer watch. In fact, he'd said hardly anything to her since they'd started the day's walk. He felt exposed. Like he'd left too much of himself vulnerable the previous day. And worse, he'd liked it.

He desperately needed to resume his emotional armor. Nothing good came of letting his guard down, not even with his generals, whom he actually trusted most of the time. He did not trust this bizarre princess from a dead world. She was dangerous. And not because she was the pilot of a space-beast that could eat him for breakfast.

"We must be nearly there," said the princess in a falsely bright voice.

"Nearly," he grumbled back, resigning himself to another day of dreaded prattling.

"I can't remember what it's like to be warm."

"It's irrelevant. Focus on the present."

"Focusing on the present is what got me into this mess."

Lotor bit his lip. He would not laugh. He. Would. Not.

"What kind of food do they have on Sala? Is it edible?"

"It's irrelevant," he said again. "Focus—"

"Yes, I heard you. Can you please talk to me? We were doing so well yesterday." She paused. "I mean, before the creatures attacked."

 _We were doing so well_ … She was referring to the snow battle, which, of course, was the absolute last thing he wanted to think about. How she'd tricked him into _playing_ , like the child he'd never been. Her face reddened by the cold, her hair tossed into wisps by the wind, her arms wrapped around him, squeezing hard enough to collapse his lungs. Her head buried into his chest as if she…

"What are you thinking?" she asked, calling him back to focus on the present as he'd been exhorting her to do for the last five doboshes.

"Nothing," he said. "I am very boring to talk to."

"Ha. Your first lie. To me, anyway."

He slowed, confused. "Was that an accusation or a compliment?"

"It was a compliment wrapped inside an accusation."

"I see."

"A compusation," she said. Then, "Huzzah! I made a thing called a portmanteau. Pidge would be proud."

Lotor shook his head and increased his pace. But Princess Allura trotted up to walk abreast of him instead of behind.

"I promise not to annoy you."

Lotor snorted.

"Okay, I promise to _try_ not to annoy you."

"Why do you wish to talk to me at all? As you pointed out yourself, we are not even allies."

"I…" she trailed off, hopefully taking her promise to avoid being annoying into account before allowing herself to respond. "I want to understand."

"Understand what?"

"You."

The simple word shorted his ability to reply for a tick. He should say "there's nothing to understand" or, better yet, ignore the ridiculous claim altogether.

Instead, his compromised faculties responded with, "Why?"

"Because…you're like me."

Lotor opened his mouth to loudly denounce any connection between him and Altean blood, but she interrupted him before he could.

"I'm not referring to race," she said quickly. "I mean…in other ways."

Lotor had never been so confused in his life. And he was nearly ten thousand years old, so that was saying a lot.

"What other ways?"

She looked down at her hands, seeming insecure for the first time since he'd met her.

"We are both…alone. Outside of time. We are on different sides of the same conflict that has consumed our lives since birth. I just…" She brushed against his arm accidentally, sending a spark of electricity through his nerve endings. "I have Coran. He is a good man, a mentor and friend. But he remembers too much of what it was like before the comet changed the fate of the universe. He wants so badly for me to remember it with him. But I don't. I was too young. Nearly everything I remember is war."

Her explanation made some amount of sense, he was surprised to admit. He, too, felt alone, and after hearing her say it out loud, he realized it was for a very similar reason.

"I didn't know you felt that way, princess."

"Well, it would help if you asked."

But he hadn't wanted to know. Still didn't want to know, in fact. But now that he did, it changed things.

"What would you like to know?"

For five long vargas, Lotor talked as he walked, the snow-haired princess trudging beside him. She was insatiably curious and strangely easy to talk to. He answered all her questions, some more obtusely than others. But all of them he answered honestly. He was extremely careful not to divulge anything that related to his plans to defeat Zarkon. He wouldn't tolerate her interference, and he liked her too much to kill her, so it would be easier for him if he didn't need to. Everything else was fair game, though, apparently. And she must have asked nearly anything that came into her mind.

It was a strange conversation. She seemed to care more about experiences that related to his emotions, his companions, his dealings with civilians. She asked him almost nothing tactical. It was a wasted opportunity in his mind, and not terribly interesting besides.

"I'm afraid I've vastly disappointed you, princess. I do not socialize much."

"It is the fact that you do not seem to "socialize much," as you put it, that I find fascinating. You do nothing that is not precisely strategic, yet your acceptance of mixed-species generals and your fair treatment of conquered worlds is the opposite of strategic. It has put you at odds with your father at a time when you should not be risking your relationship with him. So if it isn't because you care about people, and it isn't for tactical advantage, then why? Why do you bother?"

"There is tactical advantage in acquiring loyal followers based on strengths rather than heritage. My generals are the best in all sectors of all quadrants. I hand-picked them, just not for the reasons my father or a large majority of his people would. I value strength, devotion, and intelligence. The body it comes in is irrel—

"Irrelevant, yes, I know. But what about fairly treating conquered worlds? You can't tell me that has some tactical advantage?"

The conversation went on in that vein during the entire morning's walk, through the midday meal, and well into the afternoon's walk. They debated the finer points of politics, the ethics of ruling, even the failings of Zarkon's philosophy of expansion at all costs. But he never mentioned quintessence, and she never asked.

"So we've established that you don't believe in friendship," she said after they'd stopped to refill their reservoirs and started walking again. "But have you had any lovers?"

Lotor stumbled. "All right, that's enough questions for today, Princess. I'm officially reinstating silence protocols."

"Oh, please," she said, sardonically. "It's not like you care what I think of you. And at this point even I am running out of things to ask about."

"All the more reason for a break from conversation."

"I have not."

"Have not what?"

"Taken any lovers. But I was asleep for most of the time, and then on the run ever since. I have found—"

"Please stop. I'm begging you. I do not have even the smallest interest in your romantic conquests."

"Then ask me something else."

"Like what?"

But Lotor never heard her response. By the time he realized the ground beneath him was shifting, Allura had already shoved him with all her might, and possibly a dose of her strange power, clear of the chasm opening up beneath their feet.

Shoving Lotor out of harm's way, though, had pushed the princess more toward the center of the crevasse. She dropped out of sight as the ground gave way beneath her.

"No!" Lotor cried hoarsely as he leaped to the side of the hole.

She screamed, arrested in midair by a long, tongue-like tentacle wrapped around her middle. Rings of toothy barbs in concentric circles in the cave below her dripped digestive acids as the tentacle pulled her downward. A Yaroe pit, a carnivorous plant lying in wait for vibrations indicating prey.

The only reason she hadn't already been consumed was that somehow she had managed to pull out the second knife he'd given her and drive it deep into the cavern wall.

She screamed again as her arms shook with the effort of holding onto the knife.

The sight of her fighting with all her strength to survive slammed into Lotor with the force of a fatal blow. Something cracked inside him and opened wide, as if he had always been a hallway of locked doors, and the princess in death's grasp had burnt all the locks to ash at once.

Without a plan, without even a thought, Lotor jumped over the edge. He buried his fingers in the cave wall the way the princess had buried the knife, but his momentum allowed him to slide down the wall, carving rivulets in the rock with his hands. He shouldn't have been able to do it—not with flesh and bone—but he didn't care how it worked as long as it did.

When he'd dropped low enough, he slashed at the tentacle holding her with his other hand. The sticky membrane covering the tentacle interfered with his ability to slice it to ribbons with his talons.

Allura screamed a third time as the tentacle tightened around her waist, pulling harder. The knife slid a couple inches lower and angled dangerously downward.

Lotor attacked the tentacle more ferociously closer to the princess's body where it was thinner. Finally, he managed to tear through more than just the fibrous outer layers, cutting the appendage to the quick. The plant loosened its hold enough for Lotor to pull the princess free. She clung to him as she had in the snow.

His heart hammered painfully against his ribs as he pulled them carefully over the lip, expecting at any moment for the Yaroe tentacle to wrap around his leg and pull them both down again. But it never did.

Gasping with the effort, he tipped the princess's upper body onto solid ground. She crawled just far enough from the edge to pull her legs over. Then she turned and helped him the rest of the way himself. His arms felt like they were on fire now that the danger had passed. And he watched, disbelieving, as the talons he'd fought with transitioned back into his regular hands. He'd have been horrified if he had the energy to care at all. Right now, he had to attend to the injured princess.

"Are you all right?" he asked her as he crawled to her curled body.

"I'm alive, thanks to you," she said.

"I was going to say the same."

Then she rolled onto her back, and Lotor saw what the plant had done to her.

"You're bleeding," he said, his shock making him say stupid things.

"It sliced open my suit," she reported, glassy eyed.

"I can see that." He tried to keep his tone even so as not to alarm her, though he moved as quickly as his exhausted, starving body would allow him, cutting his foil blanket into strips with his last knife. They were not doing well, he thought, as he dressed her wounds as best he could with the makeshift bandages. They were not doing well, but they were going to make it to the port. It was the only option he would allow himself.

"Why did you do that?" he asked in an undertone. He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but she heard it anyway.

"Do what?"

"Push me to safety. Sacrifice yourself."

She fell quiet for a moment before answering. "Not everything is about tactical advantage," she quoted, a slight tilt to her lips. Then she passed out.


	7. Juniberry

Allura came back to consciousness feeling jostled and in pain. The whole left side of her body felt raw and somehow detached. In a fog, she wondered if she'd been blown out of Blue somehow. But the question itself reminded her of the rebel ship crash, her meeting with Lotor, then the battle with the crystal creatures, and finally the almost-getting-eaten by some sort of subterranean monster.

So where was she now? She couldn't quite manage to open her eyes yet. She felt certain a blinding headache was waiting for her to do just that. Nevertheless, her head and her hand were resting on something hard that shifted beneath them. Her legs were bent, pressure behind her knees and across her mid back. Someone was carrying her.

Her eyes popped open at that realization, headache or not.

"What's happening?" she slurred, her tongue as weak as the rest of her.

"You fell into a Yaroe pit and I pulled you out."

She was right about the headache. Stars, it hurt.

"I remember that part. What's happening now?"

"Obviously, you can't walk but we have to keep moving. So I'm carrying you."

"Put me down. At once," she added, using as imperious a tone as she could muster, given the circumstances.

"Do you think you can walk?"

"Just put me down."

But the moment her feet touched snow, she crumpled, her left side unable to support her weight. Her core muscles felt as if they had been completely shredded.

Lotor kneeled next to her.

"It is as I suspected. You are suffering from more than the wound itself. The Yaroe immobilizes its victims with a neurotoxin. It will likely wear off, but you won't be able to walk."

"For how long?"

"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe a few vargas. Maybe a few quintants."

"Quintants?" Allura said weakly. They didn't have quintants. They had very little left in the way of rations, and who knew what lay ahead of them at the port. Lotor couldn't possibly carry her for that long. The only thing that made sense was for him to leave her behind.

"We need to keep moving," he said, reading her thoughts. "The port is at least a quintant away now that our pace has slowed. And the dangers of traversing this star-forsaken plain will only increase."

Allura didn't respond. She felt defeated. Angry. She had tried so hard, and it was all for nothing.

Lotor slid his arms under her again, but she pressed a hand against his chest, forestalling him.

"You cannot carry me that far. It would be foolish to try."

"Then what would you suggest, princess?" he asked, his tone irritable.

"You should go. Send help back for me when you reach the port."

Lotor shook his head. "They would never find you in this wilderness. Unable to move, you would be covered with snow, if you hadn't already been eaten by koti or worse."

"Regardless, you should leave me and save—"

"Leaving you is not an option," he said sharply. Then he scooped her up again, causing her to gasp as the movement pulled at her wounds. "We need to keep moving."

When she could properly breathe again, she said, "You are being ridiculous and stubborn. You will kill us both, and then who will defeat Zarkon and restore the universe?"

"I am not interested in the universe, princess. It can rot for all I care."

Allura scoffed. "You care some, or you wouldn't be trying so hard to end your father's reign."

"You are confusing me with someone I am not. Being at war with a villain does not make me a hero."

"Then why are you stupidly risking yourself for me? Seems suspiciously like something a hero would do."

Lotor sighed heavily. "I refuse to waste energy arguing with you about this. I have made my decision. If you feel you must continue to debate it, then you will have to answer yourself on my behalf. Nothing you can say will make me change my mind."

Allura wanted to scream at him in frustration. She knew she should feel grateful that he wasn't leaving her to die. But she didn't want him to die with her, which is exactly what would happen if he insisted on continuing with this pigheaded plan.

"Of all the sentient life forms in all the realities that I could have been stuck in a barren wasteland with, you are by far the most aggravating," she fumed.

"The feeling is entirely mutual, princess."

"I hate you."

"I know," he said with a smirk.

Half a varga later, Lotor broke the silence.

"Stop," he said.

"Stop what?" Allura asked, feigning innocence.

"I can feel you transferring your energy to me. I don't need it and you do."

"I can't do nothing. It is not in my nature."

Lotor shifted her in his arms. Then he said, "If you must do something, then talk to me. Get me out of my head."

That surprised her. He almost never wanted her to talk. She had remained silent this long specifically because she thought it would help him.

"Well, I'm glad you said that," she said, seriously. "Because I do have a few more questions I thought of."

"Fire at will."

So she talked at him for the better part of a varga before her thoughts started dragging and her blinks drew out in length. Her voice had started to take on the sing-song quality that generally indicated extreme exhaustion.

"You should rest, princess."

"We both should," she said, though it took her longer than usual to say it. "Put me down for a few doboshes at least. We could use some water."

Obligingly, he set her down on the cold snow. Her side protested, but she was grateful for the break. Being carried, especially while injured, was not even close to comfortable. The snow wasn't either, but at least it was uncomfortable in a different way. She let out a shaky breath, testing her legs. Still useless, it turned out.

Resigned, she angled her head to watch Lotor begin the process of melting snow for water. Take out the co'l packet and the empty reservoir. Light the co'l packet. Hold the reservoir over the flame and pack it with snow. Wait for the snow to melt, then repeat. Replace the reservoir once full.

She handed him hers, though it was a struggle to get her arms to work correctly. She worried as she watched him repeat the process. She worried about the extra weight. She worried about how he would feel if she didn't make it through the night.

"What?" He asked without looking at her, as if he could read her thoughts. She hated it when he did that.

"What what?"

"I can feel you staring at me. Am I not filling the reservoir to your liking?"

"No, it's just…I'm worried about you."

"Well, you may rest assured that I am fine."

"All right," she sighed, closing her eyes. "If you say so."

The next time she woke, she was wrapped in a foil blanket and back in her position against Lotor's chest as he trudged through the snow.

"I don't even remember falling asleep," she said. "How long have I been out?"

"About a varga," he said. "Your body needs sleep to heal."

Allura groaned. "Believe me, if anyone is an expert on sleep, it is I. But what about you? The sun will be setting soon."

Lotor paused before responding. "We cannot stop. Your injury is serious. And the longer we stay out here. The more we risk another attack," he said, his breath breaking his sentences into shards.

"You can't keep carrying me without rest. Please, let me give you some of my energy. I can draw it from our surroundings to some extent. You have to let me try."

"And what happens if you overextend? How would you even know if you did? When you die in my arms? Then it really would be for nothing. I'll pass, thank you."

She wanted to call him names again, but she was too tired. She could barely keep her eyes open. Perhaps he was right, though she was loathe to admit it. She barely had enough energy to keep her own body functioning.

For a while, her mind wandered. She thought of Blue, of Pidge and the other paladins. She wondered at Shiro's hairstyle choices. She thought of Coran and her father. She barely remembered her mother, and she regretted that. She thought of Kaltenecker and the milkshake and how weird Earth culture was. And she thought of the people she'd served as a paladin of Voltron, of the pain she saw and the strength and the determination to be free.

Then she sort of came back to herself, opening her eyes and gazing at Lotor's face. He seemed broken, now that she looked at him more closely. A thin veneer of callousness overlaying a damaged and muddied soldier, who, despite all, had a good heart.

She tried to reach up to touch his cheek, but her hands were bound by the foil blanket, and she was too tired to fight it.

"Did your father ever take you to Altea?" she said, noticing his surprise at her speaking.

"No," he said. "Or if he did, I was too young to remember it."

"That is a shame," she said wistfully. "It was such a beautiful world."

"I read once that burning rocks fell from the sky like rain," he said dubiously.

"Well, no place is perfect," she said. "But it was lovely in the summer. Did you know that every year we held a worldwide celebration for a flower?"

"I did not know that."

"The purple juniberry. My favorite."

"I'm sure it was as beautiful as everything that comes from Altea."

"It was. But I didn't love it for its beauty."

"Was it medicinal?"

"It was, but that wasn't why I loved it either."

"Then why?"

"It only bloomed once a year, hence the festival. But it didn't bloom every year. Some years not a single flower bloomed, not a single berry formed, and do you know why?"

"I don't," he said, clearly humoring her, but she didn't mind.

"Because the flower wouldn't bloom without its brothers and sisters. If one of the plants couldn't bloom, then none of them did. Boggled our scientists for generations. How did it survive without pollination for years at a time? They finally figured it out, but… Anyway, that's why it was my favorite."

"It was your favorite because it bloomed capriciously?"

"It wasn't capricious. It had just evolved to understand what we advanced lifeforms can't seem to grasp."

"Which is?"

Static began to fill the space inside her skull. The more she ignored it, the louder it got.

"That…there is no purpose without..."

"I don't understand," he said softly.

When she didn't answer, he asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Tired, but…"

"But what?"

It was difficult to explain. She knew the static was bad, but she felt peaceful. Sleepy. In pain, but not subject to it. She felt a bit like she was floating, though she knew her weight must be dragging Lotor down. She felt as if she could sleep forever, dreamless this time. And she wanted to tell him…something. Something that the story about the flower had sparked. Something important.

"No purpose without…"

Then she faded into darkness.


	8. Giving Up

Lotor carried the princess into the night, stopping once a varga to drink water and rest for ten doboshes. He experimented with carrying her in different positions, but he was concerned about aggravating her wound and making her condition worse. He'd have sold his trans-reality ship for a litter to drag her, but he had nothing to build a litter with. In desperation, he had tried pulling her on the foil blanket, but without a frame, it was like dragging a sack of ore through sand. There was nothing for it. He had to carry her or leave her behind.

By the third varga after nightfall, he was entertaining thoughts of stopping, building them an elaborate hut made out of ice, and hunting the koti for food. They could build a life here. They would run out of fuel in a handful of quintants, but they could find the Yaroe pit again and try to harvest the barbs. Perhaps they would burn. And then in the winter…

Lotor laughed at himself. He must be losing his own grasp on the material plane to be fantasizing about settling down in domestic bliss with the Altean princess on Sala of all planets. Ridiculous on multiple levels. Carrying her straight into a battalion of his father's forces was preferable than being trapped with her indefinitely.

For one thing, she would not stop talking, even in delirium. Just before she had passed out entirely, she'd been babbling disjointedly about her dreams. Something about one of the paladin's hair? He'd also overheard her talking of her love for the people she'd helped save, though. And as sanctimonious and saccharine as that should have been, it surprisingly…wasn't. Were he being honest, he would have to admit that he found himself somewhat moved by it. Almost… _almost_ believing in her cause. Not because he had changed his perspective, but because she had shown him hers.

And then the part about the flower had been perplexing. Out of context, like her prior ramblings, but she had been lucid when she'd told the story. She'd even prefaced it with a question, waiting for him to respond. So she had meant to tell him, as if it held some sort of meaning beyond the obvious. Perhaps she had intended it to somehow explain the reason that she had sacrificed herself to save the son of the man who had killed not only her family but her entire world. Surely, allowing Lotor to die instead of herself when he was already positioned to do so, through no fault of her own, would have been a fair, even a generous revenge. It was a puzzle. And maybe the flower story held the key?

Or maybe Lotor was overthinking it. Saving him in that instant had seemed instinctive, as natural as breathing to her, as if her body reacted to stress by saving anything within arms distance from it. If that were true, it would prove what Lotor had begun to suspect: that the princess was an incredibly rare creature—so rare that in all his wanderings through the vast universe, Lotor had yet to come across it. He'd encountered a few true innocents in the Galra empire, children mostly. But the princess wasn't innocent. She'd been at war her whole life. She fought and killed and made mistakes, but somehow it hadn't stained her soul. Her heart was still pure.

"Lotor?"

He stopped, frozen, at the sound of his name on her lips. It was the first time she'd said it since they'd called a temporary truce, and the feeling coursing through him felt oddly similar to seeing her fighting the Yaroe pit. It was almost a physical force, and it made him want to level mountains. He wondered if saying her name aloud would have a similar effect.

"Allura," he said, practicing. The vibration of the word sent shockwaves through him. Not as strong as her saying his name, but almost. His reaction to it unnerved him.

The princess smiled, her eyes still closed. "I like it when you say my name. Better than princess." Then after a short silence, she continued, eyes still closed. "Allura instead of princess…going forward…"

"All right," he said, though he didn't repeat it. "Is that what you were going to say?"

But the prin—Allura—had fallen asleep again in his arms.

It was time to break for water, but the effects of the exchange still hadn't worn off. So he used the new energy crackling through him to continue walking. He would have suspected her of slipping him some of her energy with her power, except that she was far too weak to attempt anything like that now.

Whatever was happening was internal to him, which was its only advantage. The last thing he wanted was for Allura to know how she was affecting him—his decisions, his perspective, even his mission. It was weakness, and he had to fight it.

He shook off all reflective thought, narrowing his focus to the task at hand. He would have to address his actions and their consequences eventually, and he would have the rest of his life to sort it out. But right now, he had to get them both to the port before the next obstacle stopped them permanently.

Another varga later, Lotor could no longer feel his arms. Or his legs for that matter. His back was on fire, though. Every muscle that wasn't fatigued past the point of regeneration was tasked with carrying them both forward, step by agonizing step. The night was still a coarse blanket of swirling snow around them. Allura's body heat was growing less assistive with every moment. He was nearly as cold now as he would have been without holding her close to his chest. It worried him more than he wanted to admit. They had at least another two vargas before dawn when he could recalculate their position and determine how far it remained to the port.

"Lotor?"

The electricity cracked through him again at the sound of his name so close to his ear. He'd never felt intimacy like this. He'd shared close proximity with many people, but he'd never allowed them the access that he allowed her.

"I was going to say…"

She must be utterly delirious now if she was picking up the conversation from a vargo ago as if no time had passed.

"Yes?"

"I think it's all right. You can put me down now."

Somehow, his arms managed to pull her tighter to his chest, almost of their own will. "I can't put you down. We aren't to the port yet."

"I know," she said. Then she opened her eyes, and what he saw in them cracked his soul in half. "But you can put me down anyway. I don't feel cold anymore, or anything at all, really, other than grateful that you tried."

"Allura…" he choked.

"It's all right. Please put me down, so I can rest. It's time for me to rest."

"No." The word came out a command. Angry. "I will not."

She sighed and closed her eyes, disappointed.

"Need you to not die," she said. "Take the gauntlet, or not…paladins will find another way. But I need you to not die."

"This is unacceptable," he said, his voice shaking. "You are a paladin of Voltron. What would your king-father say if he heard you deserting your duty?"

"Not deserting," she said. "Saving you."

The honesty and conviction in her voice made him all the more angry and determined. He needed to derail her from thinking that dying would free him. He needed to remind her why she was fighting in the first place.

"Listen, princess. I lied earlier. My father _did_ take me to Altea once. After it was destroyed. He showed me the wasted rocky meteor cloud, all that's left of your precious home world."

"Won't work, Lotor."

"He told me that utter annihilation is the only thing awaiting those that stand in his path. He meant it as a warning to me, but he stated it as mathematical fact. And it is. Yours was not the only world, not the only species, that was obliterated by the Galra. And there will be more if Zarkon is not stopped."

"You ask…impossible."

"Nothing is impossible for the princess who slept ten thousand years, woke to a universe in chains, and resurrected a legend to free it."

"…stop."

"No," he said, shaking her. "Talk to me. Tell me about my hands."

"Hands?"

"In the Yaroe pit. They transformed into talons so I could help you. How does it work? Tell me."

"Iridophorial layer."

"Yes, how does it work? And why did I never know of it before?"

"We mimic. You had never seen it…until me."

 _One of many things I had never seen before you_ , he thought but didn't say.

"Go on."

Haltingly and with many gaps of silence, she explained the biology behind Altean transformation. He only half listened, his brain having difficulty following anything beyond simple concepts like _cold_ , _must move_ , and _princess_.

But an interminable amount of time later, a sliver of sun finally breached the horizon, spilling light onto the plain and flooding Lotor's senses. Allura had fallen silent for good a varga ago, but she was still alive, he could feel it. And with the sun came glimpses of a landscape broken by dark, vertical structures, still far away but closer than he dared hope. They would make it.

He hastened his pace.

For most of the morning, he walked straight into the blinding sun. He dropped his eyes to the wrapped and bulky form of the princess, precious paladin of Voltron, to avoid burning his retinas. He wasn't sure his choice resulted in less damage, though.

Lotor, son of Zarkon, Prince of Galra, one of the highest and most decorated generals in the largest empire the universe had ever seen, was losing the second most important battle of his ten-thousand-year life. It didn't help, he supposed, that he was fighting the first most important battle at the same time. Perhaps that was why we has losing the second, though it was hardly an excuse.

She stirred weakly, sensing his gaze.

 _I will save you, princess, or die trying_.

 _Lotor_ …

He heard her voice in his head, the memory of her saying his name. He would never forget it, though he would do everything in his power to forget everything else.

When the sun had finally risen enough that he could look forward again without blinding himself, it illuminated the small snow-covered rise that obscured his view of the buildings, which had to be much closer now. Once he crested the hill, he would see the port in more detail and would be able to plan their approach. Salaans had probably forgotten him, but they would recognize a soldier of the Galra empire. As far as he knew, they were still loyal to his father. Or at least, not in outright rebellion. Though, if they were, the sight of Allura should be enough to get her the help she needed.

Thirty more steps…

When he reached the top, he would set her down to refill their reservoirs as well.

Twenty more steps…

The hill was steepening, but he could manage. He was almost there.

Ten more steps…

 _We're close now, princess. Stay with me._

When he finally, finally reached the top and looked out over the port below, his knees gave and he fell to the snow, Allura cradled in his lap. Tears stung his eyes. Emotion crashed over him like an ocean, demanding and implacable.

The port—every part of it that he could see—was deserted.


	9. Last Stand

As Lotor trudged through the broken remains of the city, he came to terms with the reality that not only was the port abandoned, it had been so for hundreds of years at least. Anything decomposable had long since rotted away to nothing. Or had been carried away by koti or some other creature. Most of what was left was the stone and metal husks of weathered buildings, slowly succumbing to Salaan wind and snow.

But Lotor was used to disappointment. He didn't let it slow him down for long. As he plowed through the drifts, clutching the princess closer, he planned his next move.

First, deposit the princess in as sheltered a place as he could find. Second, scour what was left of the city for any stash of supplies or remnants of equipment that could yield parts to fix the telecommunications in Allura's gauntlet. He needed replacement wire at the very least. Probably a soldering iron. Optical fiber, or better yet, some quartz crystals. There had to be something left. He'd made do with less.

After that, he'd repair the gauntlet and call the other paladins. They would arrive the quickest.

The first task was not as easy to complete as he thought it would be, though, which didn't bode well for the other tasks. For one thing, the flooring (or what remained of it) was unstable in most of the buildings. For another, in the sounder structures, he found evidence of koti nests. They were probably out on the plain hunting for now, but they would be back before nightfall, and he couldn't risk stashing Allura like a tasty treat in one of their lairs by mistake.

On the west end of the city, he finally found a squat building in a depression, a wretched vantage point for anyone standing guard for possible threats, which is likely why the koti had not bothered with it. But the floor was stable enough two stories up, and though it was far from warm, it was at least out of the snow.

He laid her down gently on the stone floor, unwrapping her enough to check her wound. It looked infected and angry. He lit a co'l packet for light as well as heat. Though the sun penetrated the multitudinous cracks in the building's exterior, it did little to banish the shadows in the corner he'd chosen for the princess.

Once the co'l had ignited, he made fresh bandages from the mangled foil blanket he'd made the original bandages from. Then he rewrapped her wound and stuffed what was left of the blanket he'd cut bandages from under and around her head.

Tucking the folds of her own blanket back around her body, he said, "I have to leave to find supplies. I will not be far."

He knew she couldn't hear him now. Wherever she was, it wasn't here in Sala. He felt conflicted about that. On one hand, he was grateful that she was suffering less. On the other, the fear that she would slip into a state that she could never come back from was a constant, clawing fear under his ribs.

Even in the semi-darkness, he could see how sunken she looked. Her dark skin usually glowing with life looked sallow and unhealthy. Her hair resembled Honerva's, stringy and limp. The infection was draining her life force every moment he delayed.

Yet the effort it took to push himself to his feet, to take one step back, then two, was like lifting a planet onto his shoulders. He staggered under the weight of it. Far heavier than bearing her weight across the snow, leaving her so unprotected.

He scooped up the ruined bandages, taking them with him to avoid leaving a bloody scent for the koti to find. With luck, it would draw them to him instead of her. With even greater luck, he would find everything he needed and return to Allura (having buried the bandages in the snow on the farthest edge of the city from their position) before the koti returned.

Scavenging through the city was, of course, more difficult than he'd anticipated. It seemed as if the inhabitants had abandoned the city slowly over time rather than all at once from some great disaster. Which made it more difficult to find things, as people generally took their belongings with them when they had time to pack.

He dug through countless storehouses, administrative offices, and radio towers, or at least they were buildings he suspected of having been those. All he managed for his trouble were hands so cold and chapped from digging that they had started to bleed.

He tried several times to morph his body into something useful, but he had lost control of the ability (if indeed he'd ever had it in the first place), and he needed Allura to show him again.

Finally, in desperation, he scavenged a shop that appeared to have processed laundry and found a trove of intact electrical wiring buried deep in a cast iron sewing machine. The wires were tattered and worn, but they'd do. He'd given up hope of finding crystals. But at the discovery of the wire, hope reignited and he hurried through two more neighboring shops searching for some sort of power source to replace the crystals.

Half a varga later, the sun hanging low behind the city, he was no closer to finding a useable power source when he heard it—the hunting cry of the koti.

Dumping the bandages and his plans for locating a power source, he rushed back as quickly as he could to where he'd left Allura. He had tramped all over town, so he wasn't worried about tracks leading the koti pack to the building. But he knew it was only a matter of time before scent did.

When he reached Allura, the cries of the koti were still distant but coming closer. They would be back to the city before another varga had passed, and it didn't bode well that they were calling as if they had scented prey.

He knelt next to her head, gently freeing her arm from the blanket. He pulled off her gauntlet and opened the access panel. There wasn't much he could do without a power source. The wiring he replaced, wiping his bloody hands on his ruined suit as he worked.

The koti hunting calls grew closer with every dobosh that passed. He was short a power source, but he had an idea. If it was going to work, it was going to have to happen soon. Because not only had the koti gotten closer, so, too, had the wind died ominously down while he worked, heralding another storm.

If the paladins did not arrive before the storm to rescue them, they would have to wait until it let up, causing vargas of delay in which Allura's infection would spread beyond control, killing her. That was assuming it hadn't reached that point already.

"Allura," he said softly. When she didn't respond, he shook her shoulder. "Allura, please, I need you."

She blinked slowly, her gaze unseeing.

"Lotor?" she tried to say, though it came out more garbled than intelligible.

"Yes, I'm here. A storm is coming…" he started but then stopped himself. Better to keep it simple. Just the request.

"I have repaired the gauntlet, but I need a power source to get the telemetry system working. The crystals…" He stopped himself again. No need to explain why. "I need—"

She blinked slowly and extended her hand. He quickly moved the gauntlet closer to her brushing his arm against the weakening co'l packet. The koti screamed in the near distance.

She closed her eyes again and breathed out. Then her hand glowed a pink so pale he thought for a moment that he'd imagined it. But as she touched the newly replaced wires, the telecommunications indicators lit up with a quiet _bleep_. Lotor nearly wept with relief. Until Allura's hand dropped to the stone floor, seeming lifeless.

He punched the message into the gauntlet's interface, holding his breath for a speedy response. He didn't know the Voltron team's alarm codes. He might have sent them a garbage message they had no way of understanding.

Within seconds, an image of the green paladin appeared. "Allura? Where are you?"

Lotor had no way of replying. His rudimentary fixes to the gauntlet did nothing to repair that functionality. So he typed _Sala, please hurry_. _Hurt_. before the screen shorted out. He tweaked the wiring until the screen reappeared just long enough for him to send the gauntlet's coordinates. It went dark again just as the koti calls cut out altogether.

He dropped the gauntlet and drew his sword and knife, swiveling to put the injured princess behind him. As long as he stayed between her and the koti, they had a fighting chance…assuming Voltron could navigate through the storm building outside the windows.

He twirled the sword in his grip, loosening his wrist. From their last encounter with the koti, he didn't hold out much hope that he could hold them off alone. His one advantage here, though, was the narrow stairwell they'd have to ascend to get to him and Allura. He could pick them off more easily since their access point was restricted.

Within doboshes, they boiled up the stairs and into the room, crawling over each other in their haste.

Lotor tensed, stepping forward to meet the first wave head on. He slashed his sword through the throats of the first two, plunging his knife into a third, before spinning back to spear another. He picked up momentum as he worked, hacking and slashing his way through the horde as bodies piled up on the floor.

He did not escape unscathed. One koti sank its teeth into his forearm, causing him to drop the knife, before he lopped off its head. Another whipped him in the face with its tail, blinding him for a few heart-stopping moments. But Lotor reached back instinctively, grabbed the creature by one of its legs, and swung it in an arc to beat off another koti that had just lunged for his throat.

A slash to his ribs, a cut above his eye, a blow to his knee. He was breathing hard, sweat beading on his forehead, but he had managed to keep the pack away from Allura, if only just. And the moment he thought that, a new wave of koti came through the open window to his left while more shouldered their way up the stairs.

 _This is how we die_.

Lotor squared his shoulders. He had done everything he could, and it wasn't enough. But he would face his fate with only one regret.

 _I'm sorry, Allura_ , he thought to the princess as he readied his sword.

Then he stepped back, closing the distance between himself and the princess. If they wanted her, they would pay a heavy price. But just as a koti sprang at him, Lotor heard a new sound that rose to meet it—

A lion's roar.


	10. Returning

Allura woke and opened her eyes. The sight of her bedroom ceiling gave her a strange sense of vertigo, as if seeing it upon first waking were completely, alarmingly wrong.

"Lotor," she said, sitting bolt upright in bed and then hissing at the tearing pain in her abdomen.

After giving herself a tick to breathe, she swung her legs—carefully—over the side of the bed, noticed that she was in her night clothes rather than her torn suit, and shakily stood on her own two feet for the first time in, well, several quintants she was pretty sure.

 _Where is Lotor?_

She took a step forward on the smooth floor and nearly toppled over. She made a desperate grab for the wall, and then paused again to breathe.

She couldn't find him if she fell flat on her face and injured herself further.

"Coran," she said sternly to the castle wall. "Coran, where are you."

"Here, Princess. What do you need?" His voice sounded ghostly through the intercom.

"I need to see you _at once_."

"Yes, highness, I'll be there in a tick."

Bracing herself against the wall, she shuffled slowly to her closet, though she had no idea if she would be able to actually get dressed.

"Princess Allura! What are you doing out of bed? You can barely stand upright."

She turned to see Coran and Shiro in the open doorway, wearing nearly identical shocked expressions.

"Where is Lotor. You will take me to him now."

"We will do nothing of the sort," Shiro said. "You were just this side of death fourteen vargas ago. You need to res—"

"Do not—do _not_ —you dare tell me to rest. Take me to him. It has been fourteen vargas. Is he still here? Did you let him go?"

Shiro and Coran shared a meaningful look.

"What have you done?"

"Nothing," Shiro assured her. "He is unharmed. At least by us. He is in a holding cell. Keith has been questioning him."

" _Keith_? Are you joking?"

"I promise you, we have not—"

"I swear on my father's name, if you do not get out of my way, Takashi Shirogane, not even the black lion will be able to save you."

Shiro took a step back but otherwise held firm.

"Princess, please. Be reasonable. You can barely walk. Let me take a message to him."

"Message? _Message_? My message is this—" By now she had crept far enough along the wall to be within arm's length of Shiro and Coran. She grabbed Shiro by the ear and pulled his face down to her level. "—let him go. _Now_."

"W-we can't, your highness," Coran stammered. "The Blade are on their way to retrieve him for a tribunal."

"For what crime?" she nearly shrieked, letting go of Shiro.

"Abducting, er, you?"

For a moment, Allura was so enraged she couldn't speak.

"Your eyes are, uh, glowing," Coran said. "Are you feeling all right?"

"No. I am not feeling all right," she said in a quiet, calm voice that in no way reflected her emotional state. "I am trying not to rip your spleens out through your eyeballs."

"Now, Princess—"

"He did not _abduct_ me. If anything, I abducted him, and then he saved my life anyway. You will take me to him or you will give him a ship and let him go."

"We can't just give him a ship—"

"Give him one of Pidge's shuttles."

"She'd kill us."

"Give him the shuttle or I will."

Coran stepped into the room, hands out palms down as if trying to soothe Kaltenecker. Insufferable.

"Allura, please. You've had a difficult few quintants to say the least. We nearly lost you. We were going out of our minds with worry. You must look at it from our perspective."

"My perspective is the only one that matters right now."

Coran looked hurt, and though Allura felt a pang of guilt, she couldn't worry about that now. For all she knew, the Blade of Marmora could be floating just outside their docking bay, waiting to march Lotor away in chains for a crime he didn't commit.

"He saved my life. Multiple times. At profound risk to his own. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, and he absolutely deserves his freedom."

Unfortunately for her argument, her knees chose that moment to give out on her. Shiro barely reacted in time to catch her before she hit the floor.

She swore vociferously as she put a hand to her forehead. Her vision was spinning and she saw spots before her eyes.

"Allura, I'm afraid I must insist that you get back in bed. We will consider your request that we release Prince Lotor, taking into account this new information, but quite frankly, the only reason he's still alive is because we found him defending you at sword point with more than fifty of the creatures called—what was it? Koti?—dead or dying around you."

"Oh no," she said faintly, letting Shiro half-support, half-shepherd her back to her bed. The thought of what Lotor must have endured made her sick to her stomach.

"You should eat something, Allura—regain your strength. Maybe we should put you in a cryo—"

"NO! You promised me, Coran. Never again."

"But, your highness—"

"No! I will never consent to that, no matter how grave my injuries."

"All right. I understand."

"Was Lotor injured? Did you offer him food?"

"Of course, we did. We're not monsters."

Shiro looked as if he wanted to follow that up with _like him_ , but wisely, he did not.

"Did you see to his injuries?"

Coran and Shiro shared another meaningful look.

"Take me to him at—"

"We are not taking you to the holding bay, princess, so stop asking," Shiro said sternly. "He wouldn't let us put him in cryo. He has the same aversion to it as you, and likely for similar reasons. And we have no healer, so there was not much we could do for him."

"Is he all right?" she asked, suddenly struggling to get enough oxygen.

"He's fit as a flebfiel," Coran said, patting her arm. "Just a little banged up. Right as rocks, after he downed a Kaltenecker milkshake." He grinned evilly.

"Coran, you wouldn't."

"I would and I did. It's the least he deserves for putting you in such danger."

"It was my fault, Coran. All of it. You have to let him go." She wasn't above begging. It always worked on her father. Eventually.

"We will talk with the others," he assured her.

"At the very least, call off the Blade. For now, while we deliberate. He's our prisoner. It is our decision. Not theirs."

Shiro sighed. "You know how that will look, Allura. Politically, it's a terrible move. The Blade are our allies. Not our subordinates. We can't afford to look like we're trying to call all the shots."

"I know that, Shiro," she said, silently cursing her body for failing her so spectacularly right now. "But I also know what's right. And imprisoning Lotor, putting him on trial just because of who his father is, that is the opposite of right."

"He's not on trial because of who—"

"Stop lying to yourselves. That is exactly what is happening, whether the tribunal admits it officially or not. Don't give in to injustice just because it's our side that's meting it out."

Coran whistled low. "You really know how to zing a person, don't you, princess."

"Shiro," she said, taking his non-human hand. "You know I'm right."

He squeezed her hand briefly and let go.

"Put it out of your mind for now," he said as he and Coran stepped into the hallway. "You need to—"

"I know, I know. Rest."

But as the door slid shut, her brain wouldn't stop worrying. A varga later, she summoned Pidge to her room.

o~o~o~o~o

Lotor sat on the flat bench in his cell, leaning forward, elbows on knees. Even after everything, even though the Blade was coming for him, Lotor still worried more about the princess than he did himself. He suspected it would take a while for the mission imperative that had driven him well past his limits to wear off.

He had not seen a sign of Allura for fourteen vargas and he was starting to have trouble holding still. He was exhausted but couldn't sleep well. Hungry but nauseated, too. It was as if he needed to see the princess healthy and whole before he could return to his normal equilibrium.

The paladin-turned Blade had assured him that Allura was resting and recovering as well as could be expected, but Lotor was used to assessing her condition with his own eyes, and he found the sudden lack of access untenable.

The holding bay doors opened, admitting the black paladin this time. Lotor had seen little of the man since being brought on board as prisoner. After he had recounted events—well, the relevant ones, anyway—the black paladin had left and not returned. The paladin/Blade and the Altean with the mustache (Coran?) were the only ones he'd seen since then.

Lotor leaned back but didn't rise. There was a chair on the other side of the barrier to his cell for interrogators to use, so he waited for the other man to sit and speak. He found it was informative to hear which question an interrogator asked first. It gave him an idea of the person's motivation, intelligence, and personality without influence from him. And the fact that silence often threw people off balance didn't hurt.

The paladin sat and regarded him for several unhurried doboshes before finally saying, "What really happened on Sala?"

Lotor grimaced. "I already told you my version of events. If you want a different version, speak with your princess."

"I have spoken to the princess. She wants us to let you go."

That was surprising. But on retrospect he realized it really shouldn't be. Nothing about the princess was not a surprise, so he should be used to it by now.

"I thought the Blade was coming to put me on trial." He'd almost said _put me to death_ , but he didn't want to give anyone ideas if they hadn't already had them.

"They are. She wants us to give you a ship and let you go before they get here."

Lotor felt a curious sensation of simultaneous relief and disappointment—relief that she was well enough to be giving orders and still acting as his ally, for the present at least, and disappointment that she hadn't come to tell him this herself.

"Which, frankly, I find puzzling," the paladin continued. "Because before she left for the Salaan moon, she was sure you were a Galra spy loyal to your father, and that your argument with him was all for show to get in our good graces. I, for one, still believe that to be true, regardless of your actions on Sala."

"Then why are you here?"

"Pardon me?"

"Why are you here questioning me instead of her? If what you believe is true, then I haven't changed, she has."

"I want to know what spell or lie or coercion you used to change her so we can undo it."

Lotor shook his head. "If you think I have that kind of power over her, then you don't know your princess at all."

Shiro frowned. "You expect me to believe that without even knowing who was in that rebel cruiser, you just went back to help when there was no tactical advantage for you whatsoever."

Lotor smiled, half sardonic, half wistful.

"Did I say something funny?" the paladin asked, scowling.

"No," Lotor said, feeling a curious melancholy. "You said exactly what she did."

The black paladin proceeded to question him at length and in detail about everything that happened from the time his ship left the hangar on the Salaan moon until the lions had arrived on Sala to save them. The paladin did not, however, ask him what he was doing on the Salaan moon in the first place. (Amateur.) Rather, he was almost intensely focused on what Allura had said and done. Lotor answered as much as he dared. He didn't want to give away the princess's confidence as he hoped she wouldn't give away his. Besides, almost nothing they told each other had direct bearing on their adventures or on their individual missions. And the parts that did, Lotor had no intention of sharing with anyone, let alone the forthright paladin.

"Let me get this straight. You jumped into the carnivorous-plant pit to slash the tentacle it had wrapped around Allura's waist so you could pull her out?"

"More or less."

"How did you not die?"

"Honestly, I have no idea."

The black paladin leaned back, looking somewhat impressed. "And she turned a knife into a spear that emitted a disc of disintegrating light?"

When Lotor nodded, the paladin's expression took on a speculative air.

"You can see why it's difficult to believe your account, don't you?" the paladin continued. "It sounds like a fantasy story."

"I am sensible of that, yes," Lotor said. "But it is what happened. As I said earlier, if you doubt my story, ask the princess for hers."

"She's resting."

Lotor hesitated, struggling against his better judgment. But in the end, he had to know.

"Is she…all right?"

The black paladin raised an eyebrow but otherwise betrayed no emotion.

"She will recover, but she is very weak."

Lotor looked down at his hands. He had nothing left to say. She would be fine. It was enough.

The black paladin, seeming to sense the same ending that Lotor did, rose from his chair and opened the holding bay door to let himself out.

"I will stall the Blade of Marmora for now until we figure out what to do with you." Then he left.

Lotor laid down on the bench and stared at the ceiling for what seemed like vargas, thinking about the chasm growing wide between him and the princess. It seemed both strange and inevitable that he had no control over losing the intimacy he'd felt with her the last few quintants. She was back in her world and he in his, and it was right that they should separate. They had needed the camaraderie on Sala to survive, but now it was time to return to the lives they had saved each other for. He must return to his original mission, and so must she. The truce between them would end and rightfully so. But knowing this did little to ease the ache under his ribs that had replaced the clawing panic he'd felt when she was close to death.

The holding bay doors slid open again.

"I have told you everything I possibly can," he said without looking.

"Indeed? I did not hear it, so you will have to say it again."

Lotor sat up and took in the small, multi-armed animal addressing him.

"I wasn't expecting a visitor."

"I am curious. What is the real reason you went to such lengths to save the princess? The statistical likelihood that she was able to reprogram your heart in a handful of quintants is 423,345,976 to one."

"You must be Slav, Zarkon's imprisoned genius."

"Formerly imprisoned genius."

Lotor smiled. Mission success.

"What if I told you it was to orchestrate this meeting?"

"You crash landed on Sala, nearly died several times, just to meet me? You could have sent me a friend request."

Lotor chuckled and stood.

"What did you want to meet with me about?"

"I have a proposition for you."


	11. Concessions

"Pidge. Good, you're here."

Pidge crossed her arms, her face stony. "I'm not helping you. You need to rest."

"And Lotor is our enemy?"

"And Lotor is part of the empire that imprisoned my family and tortured my friends."

"Lotor did none of those things himself, and he's fighting to rid the universe of his father, as are we."

"He told you that and you just believe him?"

"I don't _just_ believe him. I believe him."

"He ditched us during negotiation, remember? Why do that if he's on our side?"

"Because we weren't on his. And anyway, none of that matters. We need to free him before the Blade get here."

"I completely disagree with you. You should have called Hunk if you wanted to convince someone to help you let him go. Come to think of it, why did you call me? You had to know I'd be the last person interested in giving Lotor a free pass."

Allura could feel her expression morphing into one of sheepish guilt. Pidge saw it and instantly caught on to Allura's plan.

"You want me to give him a shuttle."

"It's my fault he crashed his."

"But it's his fault it blew up!" Pidge said. "I'm not giving that bastard one of my ships!"

"Pidge," Allura said, pushing herself painfully up to sitting. "Either we give him your ship or I'm giving him the blue lion."

"Ha! Like the blue lion would ever choose him over you. You know it doesn't work that way."

"Then I will have to take him myself. I can't let him be punished for a crime he didn't commit."

"Why not? He committed who knows how many other crimes! It all works out in the wash."

Allura gave her a chastising look. "You know better than that, Pidge. We don't use Voltron, or the alliance, for revenge. It would make us no better than Zarkon."

Pidge sighed, pacing to the window. She gestured to the stars beyond the transparent crystal. "How many worlds has he plundered? How many people, displaced? He is no more innocent in this than any of Zarkon's generals."

"I didn't say he was innocent. But you know as well as I do his reputation for fairness and letting the worlds under his control run themselves. He is not the monster everyone wants to paint him as."

"He is still a colonializing asshat."

Allura frowned. "I don't know what 'asshat' means, but I doubt it applies in this case. Your prejudice is—"

"I'm not giving him my ship! I worked for months—"

"They are technically my ships, since they came with the castle," Allura reminded her. "But I want your blessing to give one to him."

"They all have my super secret cloaking device installed, you know. He could easily reverse engineer the technology and figure out how to decloak the green lion."

"Understood."

"But you want to give him one anyway."

Allura nodded.

"Unbelievable."

"Will you help me?"

"What happens if I say no?"

"I will not force you to say yes. I will find another way."

Pidge sighed again. Heavily. "Fine. We'll give him a ship. I owe you about a million ways from Sunday for helping me find Matt. But you are spending some serious relationship credit here. I'm calling it even after this."

Allura only understood about a third of what she said, but the important part was that she would help. "Thank you, Pidge. If it's any comfort, this is the right thing to do."

Pidge rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you think it is. Keith is going to _kill_ us."

"None of this will fall on you, I promise."

Pidge shrugged. "I'm faster and smarter than him, anyway. I'll help you to the holding bay, and then double back to get the shuttle prepped. You'd better pray the others don't come looking for you or him until he's off."

Allura nodded. "Sounds like a sound plan."

"Are you going to change out of your pajamas?"

"There's no time, I'm afraid. And anyway, clothes are clothes. It's not like I'm wandering the halls naked."

Pidge blushed. "Ugh, no. Definitely not."

With Pidge's support, Allura made it out of her bedroom and down three levels to the holding bay. Every step strengthened her legs until she could just about walk on her own. The neurotoxin must finally be wearing off, thank the stars.

As promised, Pidge left her outside the holding bay and doubled back toward the shuttle bay. Allura took a deep breath and pressed the door lock. The door slid open and she saw him, sitting on a bench, back against the wall. He was tousled and dirty, wearing an extra uniform Coran must have dug out of a locker. His weapons and his suit, probably as ruined as hers, were nowhere to be seen. He looked good in Altean gray, like he was born in it. But he was also covered in nicks and cuts. She wanted to apologize; he'd sacrificed a lot to keep her breathing.

He stood when he saw her, his expression a question he wouldn't voice. She knew that look now.

"We must hurry," she said, wobbling carefully in the direction of the barrier controls for the holding cell. "The Blade will be here soon if they're not already."

She more leaned against the barrier dissolution control than pressed it, trying to regain her balance without Lotor noticing.

But when he stepped out of the cell, he reached for her elbow to steady her. So much for appearances.

"Saving me again, princess?"

She winced at the word. She didn't remember much after the Yaroe pit, but she remembered a few things, one of them being that she'd asked him to call her Allura, not princess. The fact that he'd reverted likely meant their temporary alliance had faded. The thought made her sad.

"As you would me," she answered, then immediately regretted it. She meant to say "did."

"Yes," he said quietly. "I would."

"We should go," she said, cataloging the cuts on his face as her eyes searched his. For what, she wasn't sure, so she had no idea if it was there or not.

"Go where, princess?"

"The shuttle bay. Pidge is prepping a ship—"

"You're giving me a ship?"

"Of course. It's the very least I owe you."

"You owe me nothing. There is no debt."

"I would give you the ship anyway. Come on. We have to go."

Lotor followed Allura trustingly to the shuttle bay. As promised, Pidge had prepped the ship and it was ready for flight.

She came down the ramp when she saw Allura and Lotor enter the bay. She walked right up to Lotor and said, "This doesn't mean that I like you." Then she stalked out of the bay and back in the direction of her quarters.

"Pidge?" Lotor asked Allura.

"Yes, green lion, computer and telecommunications," she confirmed.

"She answered the call when I activated your gauntlet."

"Lotor, about that…" Allura had meant to tell him she'd heard about the koti and to apologize for being unable to assist but trailed off as she registered the startled look on his face. "What?"

"Nothing. I just didn't expect we'd still be on a first name basis."

"Would you rather I call you something else in—"

"No. I was just surprised."

Allura bit her lip.

"You have a question," he said. "I can see it on your face."

"I just want to know where we stand. Are we allies still? Or enemies? Something in between?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters."

He paused, looking introspective for a moment before responding. "To me, alliances come and go, allies become enemies, enemies become allies and then enemies again. Everyone decides in the moment what is best for them, and it changes moment to moment. My own generals tried to betray me to my father because they thought he would grant them clemency. I didn't blame them then. And I don't hold it against them now that they've returned."

"That is not how allies are supposed to work. That is not how I—"

"Loyalty is not a function of alliance in my world. Loyalty is something else. In all honesty, I've never experienced it before."

"Lotor, I—"

He reached out and pulled a lock of her hair through his fingers, silencing her with the unexpected touch.

"We are not allies, Allura of Altea. We are something else. Friends, maybe. Regardless, I am loyal to you, not your cause. If you need me, I will help, though I cannot imagine a paladin of Voltron needing my help often. As far as alliances go, I am as I ever was—an aid when it aids me to be so, indifferent otherwise. But I bear your allies no ill will."

Allura couldn't tell if she was relieved or disappointed. "What happens if the next time we meet is on the battlefield?"

Lotor sighed, letting her hair fall. "I don't have the answers. This is new territory for me as well. But your mission is not mine."

She nodded. "I guess we will find out soon enough."

Something or someone brushed past her on its way up the ramp. It took a few ticks before Allura realized it was Slav. More notably, Slav carrying a suitcase.

"Slav, where are you going? Prince Lotor is taking this ship."

Slav turned and saluted.

"Goodbye, Princess. May we meet again under more auspicious variables."

"You're leaving with him? Why?"

"There is 73% probability that if I go with him, something good will come out of it. I ran the numbers."

Then he dashed into the ship and disappeared.

"You're stealing our theoretical engineer?" she said amused.

"I offered him a position."

"From the inside of a holding cell?"

"It's a good position."

"Princess," Pidge called over the intercom. "The Blade are five doboshes out and Keith is on his way to the holding bay."

"Thanks, Pidge."

Allura didn't want to let go so quickly. She still had so many questions.

"It's time, Allura."

Before he could walk away, she grabbed his hand and spoke in Altean, a gift and a promise.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"'My spirit will find your spirit,'" she said. "It's an ancient Altean farewell between friends."

Lotor studied her for a moment as if trying to work out a riddle, but then he bowed low over their joined hands, letting go only as he straightened.

"Until then," he said and walked up the ramp.

She watched from the flight deck until the shuttle disappeared into the stars and Keith and Shiro came crashing through the shuttle bay doors.

"You let him go?" Keith demanded, just as Shiro said, "You gave him a ship?"

"Yes and yes. You can thank me later for alleviating you of having to make the decision between politics and your integrity."

"Pidge is going to _kill_ you," Shiro said, just as Keith shouted, "The Blade will probably arrest you in his place!"

"Pidge already knows, and you let me handle the Blade. Is that all, gentlemen?" She yawned pointedly. "If so, I think I'll go lay down. I could use a rest."


	12. Sixty-Three

It had been sixty-three quintants since Sala. Sixty-three quintants since he'd said goodbye to Princess Allura. And in all that time, they hadn't spoken once. Not a message. Not a mission. Nothing. He hadn't had to intervene once in battle. In fact, he hadn't even heard of any recent skirmishes, not even minor insurrections. The alliance in its entirety had been unusually docile of late, and Zarkon hadn't been stirring much, either. It seemed both sides were taking a breath.

This last was the thought that finally forced Lotor to look up from his own scheming long enough to realize something wasn't right.

"Slav," he said as they were assembling the underlying structure for his new trans-reality gate. "What is the probability that Zarkon's forces are planning an imminent attack on the Voltron alliance?"

"Huh?" said the furry, phobic ornithorhynchus. "Oh, you mean because it's been too quiet for too many quintants in a row? Hmm, let me see…taking into account the coefficient for mutual destruction and adding the binomial distribution of the expected value of inevitable annihilation of variable X…" He muttered to himself for several doboshes. "Oh, dear. Based on the Galra empire's historical patterns of periods of calm preceding violence, I calculate the odds of an imminent attack to be 984,473 to 1 on."

"In other words, highly likely," Lotor said, getting to his feet and activating his comm. "Acxa, locate Honerva's ship."

"Yes, sir," she said from the bridge. "May I ask why?"

"It is time my mother and I had a little chat."

After four vargas, Ezor said, "We are coming up on Telem-X 4 Alpha 3 now, sir. Haggar's ship is in stationary orbit and awaiting our arrival. Shall I hail them, sir?"

"I had something a little more dramatic in mind. Ready the cannons."

"Sir?" Acxa said, confusion on her face. "Didn't we just reconcile with your father not five quintants ago?"

"I got what I needed then, and now we're unreconciling. Ezor, fire when ready."

"Fire how? Are we taking them out or just getting their attention?"

"Keep it civil. Stay far enough out of their range so they don't scramble fighters but close enough that they don't ignore us altogether. Acxa, I have a separate mission for you."

"Sir."

Acxa followed Lotor to the cruiser's hangar where he prepped the green paladin's shuttle for takeoff. As he worked, he explained the mission—get in, get information, get out.

"This is the cloaking device. You'll need to divide your attention to some extent, but you should be able to operate it remotely with the modifications I made."

"There's a cloaking device?" she said, her eyes a fraction wider than normal, which for Acxa meant total shock. "Did we-?"

"Of course, we did. I'm not a total fool. Both trans-reality ships have been equipped with it. I'm holding off installing it in the cruisers until I can prevent the Galra network from leaking the specifications to the fleet. The last thing we need is for the rest of the empire to have cloaking ability as well. In any case, I want you in and out within half a varga."

"And what information am I searching for?"

"Plans for an upcoming ambush of the alliance."

"For a—What? Is this because of Sala?" She didn't say 'because of the princess,' but it was hovering in the air between them.

"Acxa, in all the years you have known me, how many times have I ever done anything just because I liked a person with no ulterior motive whatsoever?"

"Well…none."

"And how many times has it _seemed_ like I helped someone and then it turned out I had a covert reason for doing so that assisted the mission and moved us into a more advantageous position to achieve our goals?"

"Countless," she conceded.

"So what conclusion should be drawn in this case, do you think?"

Acxa seemed to accept this at face value. "I will, of course, follow your orders," she said. "But I don't understand how helping the alliance could provide us any leverage."

"It helps us when my father is distracted by a healthy rebellion—not one crippled by the destruction of its champion. But I have other uses for the information as well."

Acxa nodded, her expression reflective.

"Be careful," he continued. "Honerva can smell deceit from lightyears away. If something goes awry, even the smallest thing, come back. With or without the information."

"I will come back with the information, sir, if there is any to be had."

"Of course. Now, go before we lose our opportunity," he said and left the shuttle. Acxa complied, slipping into cloak the moment the ship exited the hangar.

Lotor made it back to the bridge in time to see Honerva's hooded face reflected large on the port screen.

"Hello, mother," he said with a roguish grin. "How are we feeling today?"

o~o~o~o~o

Two vargas later, Lotor ended the transmission with his mother in mid-tirade.

"Should I keep firing the cannon, sir?" Ezor asked as Honerva's image blinked out.

"Yes. But this time, aim it at her blackened heart."

Ezor shared a look of concern with Zethrid.

"Inform me if anything changes," he continued. "Zethrid, you have the bridge."

"Yes, sir."

The shuttle hangar was unsurprisingly empty, but after eighteen doboshes of aggravated pacing, Acxa finally piloted the paladin's shuttle back into the hangar and decloaked.

"It's about time, Acxa," he said, nearly hugging her with relief.

"You were right," she said, winded and limping a little but dragging an unconscious Galra lieutenant behind her. "She is planning something. I did not have time to extract the full story from this pitiful excuse of a soldier—" She dropped the lieutenant to the deck of the ship. "Perhaps you can carve out a little more."

"With pleasure." Lotor grinned down at his prize. Prying out the few details the lieutenant knew about Honerva's plans was a far more enjoyable way to pass the time than having a pissing match with his mother.

When he'd gotten what he needed from the soldier, he marooned him on a planet with little in the way of technology and no interstellar space travel whatsoever.

"Well?" Zethrid said. "Did you get the information you wanted?"

"Indeed. Slav, send a message to the Voltron paladins."

Slav hopped from foot to foot in agitation. "There's an 84% chance that any message I send, no matter how encrypted, will be intercepted and decoded by Zarkon's telecommunications satellites, negating the entire point of sending the message and making Zarkon even angrier with you than he already is."

"It's all right. Just send the word _juniberry_."

"Junibibble? What's a junibibble?"

"Juniberry," Lotor repeated. "The princess will know what it means."

"Still. There's a statistically significant probability that _any_ message you send will get us blown up."

"Slav."

"Okay, okay."

The response from the paladins took several doboshes longer than Lotor would have anticipated. Either the princess had forgotten him or she didn't have as much sway with the other paladins as he would have thought. Interesting, either way.

The response said simply, _Yes_.

"Stop the cruiser at the nearest star system and wait for me. I will take the shuttle."

Acxa's mouth twitched into a frown for a brief second before she said, "Aye, captain," and did as told.

"Tell Shiro and Pidge hi for me," Slav said, waving three of his arms as Lotor left the bridge. Lotor, of course, would do no such thing.

As he walked back to the hangar for the third time, he fought the emotions snarling in his chest: anxiety, uncertainty, frustration, and a few others he didn't want to name. He was angry with himself for experiencing emotion at all. They rarely edified anything and often clouded decisions that should be clear. Especially now, when his parents were breathing down his neck, he needed to be able to rely on cold logic, staunch reason, and objective analysis. He also needed to protect the princess, though, so meet with her—and muddle through emotion—he must.

Lotor enabled the shuttle's cloaking device and hyper speed for the short journey to Sala. It was perhaps over-careful to travel cloaked, but he had just poked the hornet's nest by attacking Honerva's ship. It would do no good to lead the hunting party right to the prey he was trying to protect.

When he arrived on the far side of Sala from Zarkon's moon base, he appeared to be alone. But after a moment's thought, he took a risk and deactivated the cloaking mechanism. A few ticks later, the green lion faded into view on the shuttle's starboard side.

A visual of the green paladin and the princess appeared on the shuttle's screen.

"What do you want?" the green paladin said, her tone as hostile as her glare.

"Pidge." Allura elbowed her teammate. "What is it, Lotor? Why are we here?" She sounded concerned rather than angry.

"I have news that should be communicated in person."

"In person?" the green paladin said. "Why?"

Lotor hesitated, choosing what to say carefully to avoid using words that might trigger alarms in the communications system. "The information is sensitive, and even local frequencies could be insecure."

"All right. Where would you like to meet?"

"I could follow you to your ship. I need to return the shuttle anyway."

"If you return the shuttle, how will you get back to your ship?" the green paladin asked.

"You could drop me off at the Nembid cluster. My cruiser awaits me there."

"Or we could leave you on Sala," the green paladin grumbled.

"Pidge!" Allura said, this time angry. "That's enough." Then to Lotor she said, "Follow us. You can dock in the shuttle bay."

Lotor disconnected the signal and her image flashed out.

The green paladin's reaction to him did not bode well for the other paladins hearing him out. He didn't need to convince anyone but Allura, but he would try regardless. She cared for them, and they protected her, so he would do his best to present the facts and his conclusions persuasively.

Twenty doboshes into the discussion, he was far less certain he would be able to pull it off.

"You really expect us to believe—" the black paladin started.

"Shiro, you are not listening to what—" Allura said, jumping in to defend Lotor.

"I heard him just fine. That doesn't mean he's making a case for—"

"If I may…" Lotor interrupted, raising his voice for the first time since the interview began.

Silence fell as five pairs of eyes at various levels of angry, and one pair of eyes holding only worry, turned to him.

"Believe me or don't, as you wish. The most logical solution remains the same. Whether or not the information is sound, you can still avoid the Zaleph system for a while without impairing your mission, correct?"

The silence continued, confirming his supposition.

"Then it is of no consequence to follow my advice."

"Unless _you_ are trying to hide something in the Zaleph system, Captain Obvious," the paladin with the long face and the scruffy hair said. He was wearing the blue paladin's armor, though it appeared he piloted the red lion now that Allura piloted the blue.

"I am hiding something," Lotor admitted. "But it is not in the Zaleph system."

"And you just expect us to take your word for it?"

Lotor sighed. It really was a shame that the fate of the universe rested in the hands of such a dense, obstinate species. The obstinance probably helped on occasion, but paired with the denseness, it was a wonder they hadn't blown themselves up by now. In any case, he had delivered his message and was ready to leave.

He turned to Allura. "If you will be good enough to take me back to my ship. I have said what I came to say."

"Of course. I will pilot you back to the Nembid system in the shuttle myself."

"Wait, what?" the blue-red paladin said. "Uh-uh. No way. One of us should go with you to make sure he doesn't try anything."

"Absolutely not," Allura said with no small amount of heat. "You all have done quite enough damage to our fledgling alliance with Prince Lotor as it is."

"Princess," the black paladin started. "I don't think—"

"I am more than capable of taking care of myself on a simple delivery errand, if the opposite is what you were about to imply."

"No one is saying that you—"

But Allura turned her back on the black paladin, signaling an end to the discussion. "If you will follow me, your highness," she said to Lotor. "I believe we are done here."

"Actually, I do have one other item of business." He turned to the green paladin and held out a data card. "I made a few modifications to the cloaking device and the booster engine you added to the shuttle."

"You did _what_? Who said you could mess with my ship?"

Lotor raised an eyebrow. "I did nothing that cannot be undone. However, you may want to consider keeping the alterations. The shuttle has hyperspeed capability now with a titanium reinforced hull, and the cloaking device can now be operated remote—"

"Yeah, yeah," the paladin said, grudgingly snatching the data card from his outstretched hand. "This still doesn't mean that I like you."

"Noted."

Allura gestured him through the doorway leading from the bridge to the rest of the castle. He was starting to recognize landmarks within the castle's halls. Perhaps he had been here too often.

"I apologize for my team," Allura said quietly once they'd left the bridge behind them. "The reason they suspect you so relentlessly is specifically because I do not."

"I understand," Lotor said. "And moreover, I agree with them."

"You think I shouldn't trust you?"

"I think you shouldn't trust anyone."

She was silent the rest of the way to the shuttle, but Lotor knew her well enough by now to understand that her periods of introspection were seldom long-lived. In fact, they had barely engaged the launch sequence before she asked her first question.

"Why did you go to all the trouble to discover and then tell us about the trap your father is plotting? You do realize how absurd that sounds, don't you?"

"I told you, a healthy rebellion against my father aids my plans, so I will do what I can to assist."

"But you risked your own general, your own ship, on a vague suspicion a trap might exist. That seems more than just aiding a rebellion when it is convenient to do so."

"You are right, of course," Lotor admitted. He was grateful the Nembid system was close to their position. Honesty was a luxury he could easily afford on Sala. It was a double-edged sword in this reality. "But you must realize by now that I will not allow you to be put in undue danger if I can prevent it."

"Lotor—"

"I realize that being at the forefront of the battle against the Galra, against my father, is inherently dangerous. I will not interfere with your mission any more than I would let you interfere in mine. But if I can use my connections to head off an imminent threat against you, then I will do it."

"But why?"

Lotor searched for the answer to her question, but, oddly, couldn't find it. Likely, it was behind a door he had closed for his own protection. He often compartmentalized pain to stay functional in times of duress.

"I don't have an answer for you, Allura," he said. "It simply is."

"Oh," she said softly, studying him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.

He turned to her, almost taking her hand but stopping himself just short. They were not on such familiar terms anymore. They were not on Sala. They were not close to death. And he wouldn't pretend things weren't different.

"You must heed what I said about the Zaleph system. Even if the other paladins do not. Even if they pressure you to go, you must resist. I know I have earned your trust. I am calling on that trust now. If you do nothing else I say, do this. Stay away from Zaleph until the threat is past."

Allura sighed. "I will try."

"Do more than try."

"I will do as much as I can, but I cannot promise when I don't know all the details. In fact, I barely know any details at all. Just that Zarkon is laying a trap for us somewhere in the Zaleph system sometime in the next ninety quintants or so. That is not much to go on."

"I know," Lotor said. "But it is enough. If I learn more, I will find a way to tell you."

"I can give you the castle's encryption sequence, so you can send a message."

Lotor shook his head. "It is unsafe to send messages, even encrypted. My father cannot know that I am helping you, or the minimal connection I have becomes useless."

"Then will we meet at Sala again?"

"No. It's dangerous to form a pattern. If I must, I will likely send a messenger rather than come myself."

Allura seemed upset, as if he'd offended her.

"What?"

She sighed heavily. "Lotor…why have we not spoken since Sala?"

Lotor frowned. "Because there was nothing to say."

"Friends talk to each other. Even if there is nothing pressing to say."

What was she talking about? Friends? Then he remembered their last conversation at the castle, when she'd asked if they were allies and he had said no.

"It is just as dangerous if my father finds us chatting as if he finds us plotting. If I won't risk your safety over important intelligence, then I certainly won't risk it over small talk about the weather."

"Well, I don't like it. I don't like not knowing where you are or what you're doing. You're not the only one who worries."

Was she implying she worried about _him_? He almost laughed. No one in ten-thousand years had cared enough to worry about his safety. The idea was so foreign it almost felt like a lie. But her expression was earnest and soft when her eyes touched his. And she had told him on Sala that she wanted him to live, so it likely wasn't a lie. Still.

"There is no need—"

"Stop. That's not how worry works. Telling myself you are fine is not helpful. Hearing from you that you are fine is. This last varga has been the only time in the last sixty quintants that I have felt some amount of peace."

"Sixty-three," he said softly, knowing exactly how she felt.

She gave him a questioning look.

"It has been sixty-three quintants. Since Sala."

She reached across the dashboard and took his hand. "I'm giving you the castle's encryption code."

"I won't use it."

"Lotor. Shut up."


	13. The Gelgoroth Experiment

It was by far the worst birthday in Allura's memory. Granted, she had been cryogenically frozen for the last ten thousand birthdays—the mere thought of which made her shudder with claustrophobia—but still. This one was the worst.

For one thing, no one, not even Coran, had remembered. Normally, she wouldn't care, but the team had been pulling further away from her of late, consumed by their own concerns. Pidge spent most of her free time with her brother, pouring over prisoner records and maps of the empire. Hunk spent increasing amounts of time with the Balmerans, one Balmeran in particular. Shiro was frequently off ship strategizing with other members of the alliance. Coran had conscripted Lance for ferrying him to various supply planets for repair parts for their aging castle. Keith…well, she hadn't seen Keith since she'd thwarted the Blade and let Lotor go.

Lotor was part of the problem, actually. The team disagreed often and loudly, but her siding with Lotor, her letting him go against the team's wishes in the first place, had driven a wedge between them that she didn't quite know how to rectify without sacrificing her integrity.

Mostly, she was fine with the small amount of distance that had arisen. She loved them, and she knew they loved her. They would get past the barrier eventually. Nothing could keep them estranged for long. They were her family.

But…they were her family…and it was her birthday. She felt lonely. Deeply lonely. She missed her father. She missed her friends.

And, oddly, she missed Lotor. It had been another thirty or so quintants since he'd brought news of the trap that had yet to spring. And true to his word, he hadn't contacted her since, despite having the castle's encryption code. But it was stupid to get upset that he hadn't messaged her. She knew why.

Finally, bored of her own melodramatic thoughts, she closed the diagnostic displays she had been staring at blankly for the last twenty doboshes and headed for Blue. Maybe flying would restore her sense of equilibrium. There was an asteroid belt not too far. She could use some practice dodging and shooting.

Settling into her seat in Blue's massive head immediately settled her mind as well. She sensed her connection with the lion like a calming breeze on her cheek. She sighed and closed her eyes, briefly considering taking a nap in her seat instead. But Blue nudged her mind after a dobosh or two. The lion was itching to fly as well.

Allura messaged Pidge to let her know where they were going and to give her responsibility for the bridge until Coran's return. Pidge messaged back the code for "copy that," and Allura let Blue take the lead.

A varga and a half later, Allura had worked up a light sweat, rolling, jumping, diving, and somersaulting Blue through the asteroids. She had inadvertently collided with a few, too, though. Every time she did, Blue flashed a red warning display on her right, almost as if teasing her.

Allura had tried a few weapons combinations on the asteroids as well, practicing evasive maneuvers while aiming for small, swift-moving targets. The more she let go of conscious thought and slipped into her lion's awareness, the more successful she was at coordinating multiple efforts at once. It was like a dance. She could almost hear music—mathematical, cosmic wavelengths of light and sound. She felt calm, even as she whirled and blasted chunks of rock into bits.

Her skin hummed, her eyes closed again, and the thought occurred to her to reach out with her power to see what it would do in conjunction with Blue's. She felt the tingles intensify, and a pink mist suffused the cabin.

She had just started to reach out to the nearest asteroid when alarms started clanging, jarring her out of the dance with heart-pounding fear. Something was terribly wrong.

At first, she thought her experiment had caused it, but it quickly became clear that the alarm was from an incoming distress call.

"Yes? Who is this? What's wrong?"

"It's Keith. The Gelgrethi are under attack by Zarkon's forces."

"What? Why? Aren't they still part of the empire?" Allura pulled up a schematic of the Gelgoroth system. It was on the far fringe of the empire from where the alliance held sway. "Are they rebelling? Why weren't we notified?"

"I don't know. The Blade picked up some Galra chatter yesterday, but we didn't know what to make of it. Something about avenging the empire, but there's no indication of why. The Gelgrethi are pretty small potatoes. It's a tiny, outlying system. The only thing notable about it is—"

Allura gasped when she read the data sheet. "It's one of Lotor's." She turned Blue back toward the castle. "Did they send for help?"

"No. But it's an opportune time to free the system from Galra rule. While Lotor and Zarkon's commander fight each other for the territory, we can lead a revolution on the ground, and—"

"I don't know, Keith. We don't have any kind of plan for freeing them and keeping them free. How would we support them at this distance? They'd be cut off."

"We can't pick and choose which planets we help based on strategic location."

"I didn't say that. I said we don't have a plan."

"The Blade have a plan. Voltron can participate or not. I'm sending the rendezvous coordinates now."

"Keith—"

But Keith's image flashed out as he disconnected the signal.

"Ugh. Hothead." She patched through to the other paladins. "Did you guys hear that?"

"We're on our way," Shiro said.

It didn't take long to marshal the paladins and make a decision. For once, they all agreed with Allura. But none of them, not even Allura, voted to sit out the fight. If the Gelgrethi were in need, then Voltron would help.

After wormholing to the coordinates Keith sent them, the paladins took to their lions while Coran raised the particle barrier. The battle had already begun between Lotor's battle cruisers and the Galra fleet.

"At least, Zarkon himself isn't leading the action," Coran said through their communicators. "His ship is nowhere in sight."

"So who's side are we on again?" Hunk asked from the yellow lion.

"We're on the Gelgrethi's side," Shiro said. "We're heading down to meet the Blade planetside. If we can help lead a revolt against Lotor's station, we can free the Gelgrethi from the Galra altogether."

Allura didn't say anything. She had no idea what Lotor would think when he found out the alliance was working actively against him. But she couldn't very well argue that they should let Lotor continue ruling Gelgoroth while fighting for the freedom of everyone else, either.

"Doesn't your boyfriend rule this system?" Lance asked.

"He's not my boyfriend."

 _And by the way, you should be nice to me. It's my quiznaking birthday._

"Whatever."

But when the lions touched down, it was to a very different scene than Allura expected.

The Gelgrethi held the Blade of Marmora back at blaster-point. The Blade were armed, but not engaging.

"What the hell is going on here?" Shiro muttered through the communicator.

"Let's go find out," Lance said, his lion sitting and letting him out.

Allura climbed out of her lion, unnerved by the cold reception they were receiving. The Gelgrethi seemed hostile to them, as if they were the Galra and not the ones saving them from.

"Trespassers. Your weapons are not welcome here."

The Gelgrethi who spoke seemed by his dress to be in some sort of position of power. His rounded earlobes turned red as his expression turned from mistrustful to angry.

Shiro stepped forward, edging past the Blade's sloppy line of defense. "We are here to help."

"We have heard of your help—stealing worlds from the Galra empire. We are not interested in becoming one of them."

"We do not steal worlds," Allura shouted, offended. "We offer a pathway to freedom and autonomy, to never having to sacrifice resources and self-determination to Galra tyranny again."

"So you yourselves can take what the Galra leave behind?"

"Of course not," Allura shot back, pushing her way to the front. "We trade fairly for what we receive. As all free peoples should. We fight tyranny and injustice. As all free peoples must."

"We are not under tyrannical rule. We are subjects of Prince Lotor, who provides for us, supports us, protects us from Galra interference. We are already free."

"Yeah, but what price do you pay him for that freedom?" Pidge had come to stand next to Allura, arms crossed. "Where I come from, that's called extortion."

"We feed him and his soldiers when he visits. We provide information when he asks. We listen to his counsel to our betterment. We offer him supplies, which he only takes if there is plenty. If there is lack, he refuses. There is no extortion by our definition thereof."

"Hmph," Pidge said, clearly still doubtful.

"If you wish to help us," the leader said, lowering his blaster. "Help him." He gestured over his shoulder to where Lotor's battle cruiser lit up the sky with its ion cannon.

Allura glanced at Shiro. Truthfully, she wanted to jump back into Blue and do exactly that. The battle wasn't down here, it was up there. And the longer they deliberated, the longer Lotor had to wait for reinforcements. But she couldn't be the one to suggest it. They would instantly reject her agreement as more evidence of her partiality toward Lotor. She silently pleaded with Hunk to say it instead—or even better, Keith.

Shiro sighed. "Lotor is Galra. Are you sure this is what you want?"

The Gelgrethi straightened to his full height. "If you truly are, as you claim, fighters for freedom of choice and self-determination, then you will either leave or do as we ask."

"All right, team" Shiro said. "You heard the man. Let's get up there and lend Lotor some air support."

But as Shiro strode toward his lion, one of the masked Blade pressed a hand against his chest, stopping him. "Help Lotor? Are you serious?"

"They have the right to choose, Keith. Just like the rest of us."

"But we don't have to fight. We can just leave."

"Or we can do what we came to do, and help these people. For whatever reason, they trust Lotor. We have to respect that."

At which point, Shiro shot Allura a meaningful glance that looked almost…contrite. Did that mean he was starting to trust her judgment when it came to Lotor? Allura couldn't possibly be that lucky. Either way, she headed straight for Blue, not wanting any delay on her part to lead to a change of heart from the rest of the team.

"Form Voltron," Shiro said once they were all back in their lions.

In the seconds it took them to do so, another arrival joined the commander's fleet in the fight against Lotor.

"Oh, quiznak," Lance said. "It's one of Haggar's robeasts. This day just got a whole lot worse."

The robeast focused its attention immediately on Voltron, of course, which Allura felt somewhat relieved about. Even with his trans-reality ships, she doubted Lotor could take on a robeast by himself. They were too powerful, fueled with too much quintessence and magic. And Honerva really outdid herself with this one.

"Crap, did you see it just obliterate that communications installation?" Pidge said. "Its laser blast seems to convey some kind of computer virus. If it hits us, Voltron is dead in the water."

"Anybody got any ideas for how to take this one out?" Shiro said.

"Uh-uh."

"Nope."

"Holy crow, here it comes!"

"Pidge, get that shield up!"

"I don't think the shield will—"

Allura screamed with effort as the robeast's powerful ray hit her energy block dead center.

"Wait," said Pidge. "What's happening? It's not hitting our shield."

"Allura, what are you doing?" Shiro snapped. "Was that you?"

"Yes," she said, hoarsely. "I couldn't let it hit us."

"She's right," Pidge said. "If that ray so much as touches us, it will infect all of Voltron, all the lions. None of us will be able to fight back."

"What do we do?" Hunk said.

"Separate. At least until we come up with a plan," Shiro said. "If it hits one of us, then the others can still fight."

Allura pulled Blue out of Voltron and whirled around. "Pidge, you should cloak your lion," she said. "It can't hit you if it can't find you."

The green lion obediently disappeared from view.

"I'm going to shoot it from multiple angles, try to find its weak spot," Lance said. "Cover me."

"On it," said Hunk from the yellow lion.

As the others engaged the robeast, tactically harassing it in coordinated attacks, Allura hung back, letting Blue float away from the melee as she thought the predicament through.

It was only a matter of time before one of the lions was caught in the deadly ray. What would happen, then, if Pidge couldn't fix it? What if a lion was lost forever? How would they ever defeat Zarkon without Voltron?

And what of Lotor? His cruiser was still bravely battling an entire fleet. His ship's particle barrier had fallen, and the hull was taking heavy fire. How many crew had he already lost? How much longer could he hold out?

Allura knew she and Blue had a special connection, and she suspected that her power, melded with her lion's, could do things no one had ever seen before. But she had never tried it. She had no idea what releasing control of her innate magical abilities and amplifying it through her lion would do to her, not to mention anyone near her. But what choice did she have? They were running out of time.

She cleared her mind, like she had in the asteroid field only a few vargas ago. She reached out to Blue and whispered her ideas, asking for permission. Blue purred in her mind, which Allura took as consent. So she opened up, unshackling the power she felt simmering beneath her skin.

"Allura, stop." Lotor's voice rang sternly from her communications display. He must have finally used the castle encryption code she'd given him. "It is too much, even for you."

"Do you have another suggestion? Because if that weapon touches any of us, we are adrift. We have a few ticks at most."

He paused for a moment before saying, "Retreat. Leave us."

"No quiznaking way."

She punched the communications dash to disable transmission. She'd been at war the longest of any of them, besides Coran. It was time she stopped letting them all constantly second-guess her judgment.

"All right, Blue. Let's finish this. Form jaw blade."

Then, eyes closed, she lengthened the blade into a spear, just as she had in the fight against the koti on Sala. But with Blue's power added to her own, she felt stretched past the boundaries of what she could hold, her skin barely containing the blending of energies.

She sensed the planet, the system, the far flung stars, and every lifeform in between, like tiny fires in her mind. If she wanted, she could reach out and take that quintessence, bend it to her will. But instead, she drew from the deep well in her own body, amplifying her essence to a fever pitch, leaving Blue to harness and wield it.

Then together, they danced, diving toward the robeast, avoiding its mechanized tentacles the same way they had dipped and weaved through the asteroids. The lion slashed at the heavily armored sides with the glowing spear, disintegrating metal and flesh wherever it touched. The robeast howled in anguish, its cries sounding synthesized and distorted, as if radiating from a tortured machine.

It redoubled its efforts, focusing its deadly laser on the blue lion doing the bulk of the damage.

"Allura's magic seems to be inoculating her lion from the virus," Pidge shouted from her cloaked position. "A couple more swipes from that thing, and the beast'll be toast!"

Allura could feel her strength draining, though. She wasn't sure she had more than one pass left in her. Then suddenly, the robeast lashed out, wrapping its tentacles around Blue and squeezing while electrical pulses shot through both lion and paladin. Allura screamed, and then panted when the electricity flickered out.

"Blue?" she called, panicked when the lion didn't respond. She shifted the controls, her nerve endings on fire, trying to wake up her lion. "Come on, Blue. I need you."

Another jolt of electricity rocketed through the cabin. This time, Allura was ready for it, though, and she pushed it away from her with an ever expanding sphere of rose-tinged gold. As the light touched Blue's controls, indicators flipped on, beeps greeted her ears, and a ferocious growl echoed through space.

Allura's communicator came back online mid-cheer as the paladins saw Blue coming back to life.

"You're still caught in the tentacles, though, and we have no idea how to get you out without one of us falling into the same trap," Hunk said.

"Perhaps we can be of some assistance," said Lotor's voice in her ear. "Decloaking in two, one. Slav, fire when ready."

Allura caught sight of one of Lotor's trans-reality ships off her port side just as its shipboard cannon shot a strange looking pulse at the robeast's nearest tentacle. The tentacle's blue phosphorescent light blinked a few times before going dark completely and sloughing off the robeast's body.

"It worked!" Slav crowed. "Now there's a 37.3% chance it will work again."

"Bastard stole my cloaking tech—I knew it!" said Pidge from her own cloaked lion just as Shiro said, "What the hell was that?"

Ignoring Pidge's comment, Slav said, "I isolated and analyzed the virus matrix and wrote a program that counteracts its binary sequence. The laser rewrites—"

"Rewrites its code!" Hunk finished. "Genius!"

"All right, Slav!" said Lance. "Let's take this nasty octopus down."

"Hunk and I will hold back the fleet," Shiro said. "Lance and Pidge, stay with Allura. Distract the robeast while Lotor and Slav free her lion."

"Copy that," said Pidge as the green lion rolled in for another attack.

But Allura saw new tentacles forming even as Slav's anti-virus ray worked to free her from the ones that ensnared her. The ray wouldn't be enough to finish the robeast, so Allura rebuilt the javelin in her mind, knowing that she would only have one shot at it, knowing the others wouldn't approve.

When the last tentacle fell away, the first new tentacle snaked out to reestablish a hold on Blue, but instead of ordering a Blue away, Allura directed the lion to fly full force into the center of the robeast at the same moment she reformed the spear straight through the heart of the monster. Allura used every ounce of energy she had left to throw up a spherical shield around the imploding robeast, herself, and Blue, to contain the blast and protect her friends.

Light filled the sphere, flooding Allura's senses. A disc of still brighter light emanated from the center of the robeast, rolling outward and disintegrating everything in its path, the way it had the koti pack on Sala. Allura prayed that her shield would hold after she disintegrated, prayed that the trans-reality comet's special properties would somehow protect Blue. But as the wave of light passed through her, she felt nothing but a gentle surge of warmth. The disc had somehow recognized her and left her alive. Then it dissipated as it hit her shield.

She checked Blue's sensors, but the robeast seemed to have been erased as well. All traces of it were gone. So Allura dropped the shield, allowing the paladins access once more.

"—went poof!" Lance was shouting through the communicator.

Shiro added, "I don't know what you did, Allura, but I'd prefer it if you warned us next time."

"What of the Galra fleet?" Allura asked weakly. She barely had enough energy remaining to sit upright in her chair.

"Honestly," said Hunk. "They took one look at your glowy, pink ball of death and hightailed it out of here."

"Are you all right, Princess," Lotor asked. She winced slightly at the formality but was too exhausted to object.

"Yes, fine. Tired, but unharmed."

The trans-reality ship banked left then and headed back toward Lotor's damaged cruiser. Allura felt oddly disappointed. Blue purred reassurance in her mind.

"We should go check on the Gelgrethi," Shiro said. "Allura are you up for it?"

"Yes, of course," she said, straightening in her chair with effort so she could maneuver Blue back to the planet.

The Gelgrethi threw an impromptu feast in their honor, and though it wasn't technically for Allura's birthday, she pretended like it was. She even danced once with Hunk, though her energy reserves were so low that she kept nodding off during the toasts and speeches.

She didn't see Lotor in the crowd, though she somehow sensed his presence. He wasn't there, but he wasn't far. Allura was so drained that she actually felt woeful that he seemed to be avoiding her. Normally, she'd push the pathetic notion out of her mind, but she was so tired, and so lonely, and it was her birthday…

"Allura?"

Her heart stopped for a full tick. She turned to see Lotor standing behind her as if she'd conjured him. Her cheeks flamed with heat, embarrassed at what she had just been thinking and relieved that she had picked that very moment to retreat into shadow.

"You're here," she said stupidly.

"As are you."

She couldn't read his expression in the darkness, but then she often couldn't read his expression so that was hardly new.

"Are you going to yell at me for putting your allies at risk with my experimental magic?" she asked, wanting to get it over with if that indeed was his plan.

"No. Though, I was somewhat annoyed that you ignored my advice to retreat."

"We weren't going to just leave you…" she started hotly, then calmed her tone to admit the truth. " _I_ wasn't going to just leave you."

"You should have," Lotor insisted. "But I'm grateful that you did not."

"Why did the Galra attack Gelgoroth?" she asked. "Was this the trap?"

He shook his head. "You will know it for a trap if it springs. You must still avoid the Zaleph system at all costs. Today's purpose was merely to cripple my resources."

"But why?"

"Haggar sees me as a threat to the empire. And I am. Just not in the way she thinks."

"What can I do to help?"

Lotor smiled. "Just keep doing what you're doing, Princess."

"I prefer it when you call me Allura," she admonished him.

"I know," he said softly, his gaze never leaving her face. She could feel it all the way to her feet. As if the disc of light were passing through her a second time.

She almost reached for him then. To do what, she had no idea. But at the same moment, he moved, breaking whatever spell she was under.

"I have something for you," he said, almost awkwardly, and he opened a compartment in his suit and pulled out a small box.

"Happy birthday," he said, handing the box to Allura.

She took it, staring gobsmacked at him. "How did you know it was my birthday?"

"You're a historical figure. It's not a secret."

"I—" She stopped, not knowing what to say. The box was about the size of a teacup, an unmarked gray. "Thank you," she managed finally.

"You're welcome, Allura."

Then he bowed and walked away, disappearing into the night.

"What did _he_ want?" Lance asked, as he and Hunk joined Allura. Then he saw the box in Allura's hand and added, "What the quiznak is _that_?"

"Birthday present," Allura answered absently.

"It's your birthday?" Lance said, sounding garbled.

"I can't believe you didn't tell us it was your birthday," said Hunk. "Where am I going to get stuff to make a cake?"

o~o~o~o~o

After the party began to slow, Allura made her way back to the castle, specifically to Blue's bay. She sat cross-legged on Blue's paw, holding the box Lotor had given her. She opened it carefully, not knowing what to expect. What she found left her breathless.

It was a juniberry flower carved out of some kind of stone, impossibly light for its density and colored with luminescent paint in the signature white and pink shades of the Altean plant. Her favorite.

She remembered telling him about the flower, about how it only bloomed once a year. But the rest of what she had said about it had faded from her mind. What did he mean by giving it to her now?

She inspected the box again, but there was no note, no explanation. So she examined the flower closer, thinking the message might be hidden in within it. She traced the edges of the the blade-like petals, the three-pronged pistil, the stalwart stem. But if Lotor had included a message, it was too well hidden for Allura to find.

"Princess?"

Allura nearly dropped the flower in her startlement.

"Keith? What are you doing here?"

Keith, still in his Blade uniform, sighed as he stepped closer to Blue and stopped. "I came to apologize. For the way I've been acting. I shouldn't have yelled at you. Especially on your birthday."

He looked so remorseful that Allura didn't have the heart to stay angry at him. She stood up and bridged the distance, meeting him in the middle.

"I, of all people, understand why you are so bullheaded about defeating Lotor."

"You do?"

"Of course. It's partly my fault. I held being Galra against you. I treated you like you were suddenly evil. Naturally, you would want to prove me wrong by taking down any Galra not working with the Blade."

"It's not your fault, Princess," Keith said, dropping his gaze. "I just couldn't get over the fact that he's the son of Zarkon. How did you? Get over it, I mean."

Allura thought of her alliance with Lotor on Sala, of the conversations that revealed who he truly was when even he didn't really know, of his many willing sacrifices to save her. But none of those were where it started.

"You got me over it, Keith," she said smiling softly at him. "When I realized that no amount of Galra blood could ever make you evil, I finally figured out that evil was an action, not a species. And not a family, either."

Keith nodded, his expression looking more relieved than she'd seen it in a long time.

"I'm not sure I'll ever see what you see in him, but…maybe I can give him the benefit of the doubt."

Allura hugged him. "It's good to be back on your good side," she said.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far."

She laughed as they walked back to their friends together.


	14. Springing the Trap

"Lotor? Can we…talk?"

Lotor looked up from inputting Slav's calculations into the gate's mainframe to see an anxious Acxa looking anywhere but back at him.

"Should I be worried you're going to shoot me again?"

"Possibly. If you don't shoot me first."

"Lovely."

He abandoned his post and followed his most trusted general to a little used deck in the upper level of the ramshackle base they'd hastily built in the shadows of Daibazaal.

"What is it, Acxa? We have work we should be doing."

"Zethrid, Ezor, and I are worried that you are letting the Voltron paladin distract you."

"I beg your pardon. What Voltron paladin?"

"The one you go running to whenever she is in a millistrum of trouble."

"I haven't spoken to a single alliance rebel, let alone a paladin, in over thirty quintants," he objected, knowing it wasn't as convincing as it should have been.

"The flower, Lotor."

Well, quiznak, as Allura would say. "How did you—"

"We're not blind, Lotor. You were working on it for an entire moon cycle whenever you thought we weren't looking. Trans-reality ore is precious. Yet you made a trinket out of what little we have left and gave it to a sworn enemy. For her birthday."

Lotor knew better than to deny it. Or to pretend he had some ulterior motive. He did not, and she knew it.

"What exactly is your concern?" he asked instead.

"Our concern is that when the time comes, you will abandon the mission, abandon us. That you'll choose the alliance over us."

Lotor leaned against a metal balustrade. He cared for Acxa, for all his generals. And he'd tried to instill a bond of trust that had never existed between his father and his generals. But Lotor had damaged that trust, and the scar of that wound still lingered.

"This isn't about the Altean princess," he said. "It's about Narti."

It was Acxa's turn to look uncomfortable, but she mustered the courage to say, "You killed Narti when you merely suspected her of betrayal. But I _shot_ you. We were going to deliver you to Zarkon. Why did you take us back?"

"Because it wasn't mere suspicion with Narti. I knew for certain that she had betrayed me. In fact, not only had she betrayed me, she had given her allegiance to Honerva and had been spying on us for some time. Whereas, when you betrayed me, it was in the moment, and because you were afraid I was unstable and you no longer felt safe. That was a failing of my leadership, not your allegiance. It is different. Do you see?"

Acxa nodded, but her brow was furrowed.

"Acxa, if you trust nothing else, trust this: our mission is everything to me. I killed Narti because she threatened it. I reinstated you because I need you to achieve it. You know my reasons. You have the same reasons yourself. This mission will succeed. Zarkon will fall. Everything else is a means to that end."

"Even the royal paladin?"

Lotor considered for a moment before saying, "Let's put it this way. I consider her an asset to be protected. If any of you cannot follow commands to that end, I will demote you and replace you with someone who can. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir." Then she blurted, with an expression of curiosity more than anything else, "Are you in love with her, sir?"

Lotor thought about it, but he didn't know. The answer was likely hiding behind the same locked door as the answer to Allura's question about why he considered her worth protecting. The response he could give, though, was the same either way.

"It's irrelevant. Focus on the present."

"Yes, sir."

o~o~o~o~o

A few nights later, Lotor had the strangest dream. He and Allura were sitting at a table on Sala in the middle of the wilderness. At first, she took no notice of him as she methodically ate from the plate in front of her.

After a while, in the way of dreams, a long line of people appeared, snaking out into the Salaan plain from where Allura sat, waiting, it seemed, for their turn to engage the princess. They might have always been there, though, and Lotor had only just noticed.

They seemed to be adding things to Allura's plate, and as things were added, Allura ate. When Lotor looked closer at her plate, he realized with a sinking dread that she was eating juniberry flowers. He wanted to stop her, to reach out and take her plate away, because he knew that her heart was breaking with every bite she took, though not a flicker of emotion passed over her face. But he couldn't move. His body was bound to the chair as if with heavy magnets.

For the longest time, an eternity, she seemed to take no notice of him. She simply ate, petal after petal, until the next blossom was added to her plate. Then finally, after Lotor had given up hope of anything changing, Allura looked up at him and said,

"Remember. There is no purpose. There is no purpose without—"

But he never found out what she was going to say, because the dream changed to Allura screaming from the pilot's seat of the blue lion.

Lotor sat bolt upright in bed, blanket drenched in sweat and sliding onto the floor.

But the dream hadn't stopped.

" _Lotor! Help us! Hurry!_ "

He couldn't see her now, only hear her. In his head. As clearly as if she were standing next to him.

" _Hurry! I can't hold out much longer!_ "

"Where are you?" He said it out loud, but also somehow to the Allura in his head.

" _Zaleph. You were right._ " And coordinates fell magically into his brain. He didn't hear them so much as feel them, but it didn't matter. He was already throwing his suit on and striding toward the hangar.

"Ezor!" he shouted through the communicator. "Set a course for Zaleph Epsilon, Section-04978, UPM 2.034."

"Yes, sir. Coming about. With haste, I presume?"

"Maximum hyper speed on my mark. Acxa, meet me in the hangar."

"Copy that," Acxa answered.

She was already suited up and standing next to the second Sincline ship when he arrived.

"Same coordinates?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, climbing into the first.

"The princess?"

"Affirmative," he said, while she settled into the second.

"Any idea what we'll be facing when we get there?"

His silence was answer enough.

After he and Acxa's ships were clear of the cruiser, he said, "Mark."

Then he, Acxa, and his entire fleet leapt into hyper speed.

The Sincline ships being lightest, Lotor and Acxa were the first to arrive at the coordinates Allura had given him.

"What in the thousand fires of Poltara is _that_?" Acxa breathed.

Lotor sat silent in shock for half a tick himself just absorbing the scene. He had never in his entire life seen anything like it.

A vast network of ley lines, dark energy the color of bruises, extended in a circle across the gaping chasm of a black hole. And at the center of it, small as a fly in a spider's web, lay Voltron, in suspended animation, caught between the gravity of the black hole and the net of magical energy that had ensnared it.

Snapping into action, Lotor punched commands into his dashboard, scanning the area and maneuvering toward the edge of the trap so he could get a closer look at it.

"It's a net," Acxa said, finally coming out of her shock.

"Worse," said Lotor, scrolling through the readings flashing up on his display. "It's the komar. They rebuilt it, configuring it into a web to trap the untrappable."

"What are we going to do? We have no weapons that can battle magic. And even if we did, you can bet that Zarkon is on his way here now to collect his prize."

"We don't need to attack the energy streams. The weakest points of a net are where it attaches," he said. Then he sent Acxa a screenshot of one of the energy generators suspended along the rim of the black hole's gravitational pull. "We attack that."

"But what of Zarkon?"

"Focus, Acxa. Your job is to take out those generators. Go. Now."

"Yes, sir."

As she sped off to carry out his orders, he opened his mind, searching for Allura.

" _Here_ ," he heard her say.

"What is your status?"

" _Keeping us alive. Barely. My power. It's being sucked out of me_." Her voice sounded desperate and afraid. He wanted more than anything to reach through their tenuous connection and add his own life force to hers.

"It's the komar. Honerva is using it to neutralize you."

" _It's working_ ," Allura sobbed.

"Acxa is taking down the net. I'm coming to you."

" _Don't! You'll be caught!_ "

"Trust me, Allura."

" _I_ … _trust you_."

Satisfied, he closed the connection so he could concentrate. The net was not a problem for a ship as small as his. He could easily avoid the energy streams. The issue was the black hole. Even if they managed to free Voltron, in its current state, it would instantly be sucked in and crushed. As it was, Honerva's engineers had left barely a cruiser's length between the net and the vortex—enough room for her ship to scoop up its prize with a tractor beam, but not enough room to give Voltron time to reboot before being sucked in once the net was turned off.

It was the perfect trap, and despite his warning, the paladins—Allura included—had fallen right into it.

He shook off his anger and focused on the black hole. There was one possibility he could think of. It was a terrible idea, and if Slav were here, he would no doubt rattle off all the ways in which it would go horribly awry and kill them all, but it was the only idea he had. He would have to time it perfectly. He would have to risk that, even completely immobilized and without power, the robot's trans-reality properties would still operate. And he would have to sacrifice every last bit of trans-reality ore he had left in the effort.

After setting the computer to calculate the precise trajectory the ore would have to travel and setting the nav systems to pull his ship as close as possible to Voltron's massive chest, Lotor opened the ship's hatch and slipped out into space, using his suit's jets to help him maneuver the remaining comet ore into the front of his ship's ion cannon.

The gravitational pull of the black hole didn't operate in the bubble of space around the magic-fueled net. But once the net lost power, and gravity was back in play, Lotor had fractions of a tick to act before the unthinkable happened.

"Acxa, how many more generators?"

"Three…I think."

"You think?"

"They're not all in a line. I'm going as fast as I can."

The moment the words left her mouth, Zarkon's ship, and five fleets, jumped into the space around them.

"Go faster," he said.

Then he grabbed a tether line he used to moor his ship to the cruiser, pushed off from his ship, and attached the end of it with magnetic clips to Voltron's back.

" _I can't_ … _I can't_ …"

"Just a few more ticks, Allura," he said. "Hold on! That's an order!"

Then he dived back into his ship's cockpit and enabled its particle barrier just as Zarkon's fleet opened fire.

"Come on, Ezor," he muttered.

"You called, sir?" Ezor responded just as Lotor's fleet appeared out of hyper speed.

"Thank the stars. Return fire!"

"Copy that."

Then Lotor's fleet lit up the void with cannon blasts that eviscerated Zarkon's fighters.

"Acxa, report!"

"Last one, sir! In three, two— Augh!"

An explosion lit up his port viewer.

"Acxa!"

"I've been hit! Quiznaking sentry snuck up on me. Cannon's blown. I'm coming around for another run on the generator."

"How are you going to shoot it without a cannon?" Zethrid said over comm.

"I'm not," Acxa said softly. "Zeth, I'm going to need a ride."

"What? You're going to crash the ship? One of our _only two_ Sincline ships? Are you crazy?"

"Sorry, sir," Acxa said.

Then a massive explosion rocked Lotor's ship, almost causing him to miss his window.

The dark energy net dissipated all at once, and he shot forward, full thrusters, past Voltron, putting his one remaining trans-reality ship between Voltron and the black hole. Then he fired his ion cannon, launching the comet's ore straight into the heart of it. In the micro ticks before the ore reached the black hole, Lotor sent his final message to his generals. Then the gravitational pull of the black hole sucked his ship and Voltron into its gaping maw.

The pressure at first was brutal. Even in the protective cavity of his trans-reality ship, he could feel it like a mountain on his chest. He struggled to breathe. For five crushing doboshes, he thought his plan hadn't worked. That the black hole had not reacted with the trans-reality ore the way other celestial bodies did and create a rift.

But then the pressure suddenly receded and he gasped in a full breath. It had worked after all. He had managed to create a tiny tear in the fabric of reality. Enough to buy them some time.

"Allura!" He shouted, both aloud and through their mental connection, whatever it was. But there was no answer. "Allura!"

He would not allow himself to contemplate what her lack of response might mean.

"Allura!" He shouted again, louder this time. " _Allura!_ "

"Here," she said tiredly, this time through his comm. "All of us. Where are we?"

Lotor explained his desperate plan. He explained about the comet and the rift.

"But we aren't done yet," he continued. "We have to go back through the same rift, and Zarkon knows it. He'll be waiting."

"We can't," she said weeping. "Voltron is not responding. Blue is not responding. The other paladins are alive, but they're unconscious."

"I know, I know," he said. "But they will wake up. We have time. Not much, but it will be enough."

"How do you know it will be enough?"

"Because it has to be."

"Allura?"

"Shiro!" Allura said, relief suffusing her voice. "Lotor saved us."

"Not completely," Lotor qualified. "There's still work to do. Is your lion back online yet?"

"What's happening?" slurred the yellow paladin. "Did we win?"

"Where are we?" The green paladin joined the conversation, sounding surly. "I can't get any readings on my dash. My lion is still out cold."

"We're in an alternate reality," Allura said, sounding much more like her usual self. "Temporarily. Until we can get Voltron operational again."

"What happened? How did we end up in an alternate reality?" The red paladin was awake now as well.

"We fell right into the trap Lotor warned us about," Allura said, her tone sharpening. "Just like I said we would."

The last part was for Lotor's benefit, he was sure.

"We had no choice, Allura. They had my father."

That was the green paladin again. Interesting. Lotor filed that bit of information away for later perusal.

"They very nearly had us, too," the black paladin said. "Thanks for the assistance, Lotor."

Lotor responded with stony silence. Assistance. As if Lotor hadn't risked everything, as if his people weren't dying right now while the paladins took a breath. All because they had _ignored_ his warning. He had lost one of his ships and all his remaining ore, and he might have lost Acxa, for all he knew. _Assistance_.

Allura must have sensed his mood, because she chimed in quickly. "We all must get our lions operational as soon as possible so we can go back and face Zarkon."

"Can we, like, not do that?" the yellow paladin said. "I kind of like this reality. It's peaceful here. None of that Galra nonsense."

"Well, except for Lotor," the red paladin said.

It was all Lotor could do to refrain from screaming at them.

"Ow! Hey! Who just smacked me?" the red paladin said.

"I did," Allura said. "And I'll do it again if you lot don't start taking this seriously. We have to get back there and fight for the people who _right_ _now_ are risking their lives to save ours, battling Zarkon's forces, overwhelmingly outnumbered and with no one to support them, while we get back on our feet. We _will not_ abandon them or keep them waiting for one tick longer than necessary. We will rally our lions, travel back through the rift, and get Voltron back in this fight _as soon as possible_. Am I making myself _perfectly clear_?"

Allura's voice rang with the authority of someone long accustomed to command, and Lotor found himself inexplicably ready to follow that voice into any battle to which it saw fit to lead him. He had never felt so willing to be a follower before, but he would follow Allura of Altea to the ends of the universe.

"All right, team, you heard the princess," the black paladin said. "Connect with your lions. You know what to do."

And one by one, the lions of Voltron lit up and roared.

The trip back through the black hole was as unpleasant as the initial trip, but with Voltron empowered, Lotor didn't have to worry about the gravitational field sucking them back in. His ship was still tethered to Voltron's back, but he could deactivate the magnets from inside his ship. Once they'd made it past the point of no return, he did exactly that.

"We don't have to defeat Zarkon today," the black paladin reminded them. "Just hold him back until we all get clear enough to retreat."

"I don't know," the red paladin said. "I'm still feeling pretty miffed about the net thing. I say we go for the jugular."

"You know it's not that easy, Lance," the black paladin said. "Let's get clear and get home. Coran has to be wondering why we didn't make the rendezvous point."

"All riiight," the red paladin drawled.

Lotor tuned them out as they started their attack on Zarkon's main battle ship.

"Acxa, Ezor. Report."

"Ezor here. Glad you're back, sir. We took heavy hits on decks five, twelve, and thirteen. Eighty casualties thus far, not counting the sentries."

"Call the fighters in. Prepare to jump to hyper speed to the coordinates I sent you."

"Yes, sir."

"Acxa!"

"Sir."

Lotor let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "You made it."

"Of course, sir. Not making it would have been against standing orders, sir."

"That's right," he said, smiling. "And don't you forget it."

With Voltron's help, they managed to jump Lotor's fleet—or what was left of it—to safety. But no sooner had he seen his forces settled, orders given, then he jumped back in his ship and headed for the coordinates the Voltron team had given him before they returned through the rift to face Zarkon. He had some unfinished business to attend to.

When he caught up to the castle ship, he docked in the shuttle bay and made the now familiar trek to the bridge. As he walked, his battle persona wore off and his rage at their careless disregard grew. They were infants acting like they were gods, immune to mortality, when in fact, they were among the most vulnerable creatures he knew. How dare they put so much at risk for their own petty concerns? As if no one in the universe had ever had to sacrifice as much as they had.

Upon entering the bridge, Lotor caught sight of the black paladin and his rage boiled over. He strode straight up to the man and punched him hard on the jaw.

Surprised, the paladin fell to his knee, a hand to his face.

"What the hell was that for?" the red paladin said, having jumped out of his seat and drawn his weapon.

"I put my _mission_ at risk to warn you about that trap. Yet you take them there anyway? Because it was personal? Would it have been personal enough if they had all died because of it? Would it have been worth it then?"

"Hey, we all agreed to go," the yellow paladin broke in.

The black paladin had risen to his feet again by then, his lower lip bleeding. He did not assume a defensive stance, however.

"You are their leader," Lotor continued. "It is your responsibility to protect them, especially from foreseen and preventable dangers. You failed them today. You failed her. And you cost me eighty good soldiers."

The paladin had the sense to drop his gaze then.

"What do you know about it, Prince of Galra?" the green paladin broke in, looking even younger than usual in her bitter exhaustion. "They had my _father_ on that ship. What would you have done if they'd had your father? Oh, wait. I forgot your father is a—"

" _Pidge!_ That is enough!"

Allura had just walked in, hair freshly washed and wearing a uniform he'd not seen before. It wasn't her usual paladin suit, though it was a fairly close approximation. She looked glorious in her anger, the air practically crackling with energy around her. He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life, the thought of which made him irrationally angrier. He was tired, and he _still_ had work to do, and he wanted off this quiznaking ship.

"You are right, Prince Lotor," the black paladin said, his expression aggravatingly humble and grave. "It is my responsibility, and I let my feelings cloud my judgment. We owe you a great debt. I won't forget it."

"I am not here to mark a debt but to deliver another warning. One day I will no longer be here to assist. Do. Better."

Then he turned and strode toward the doorway, wanting to leave before another paladin spoke and he lost all control of his temper.

As he passed Allura, though, he looked her dead in the eye and growled, "Don't ever scare me like that again."

And within three doboshes, he was in his ship and heading away from the castle, cloaking as he cleared the shuttle bay doors.

He had one more errand to run before he could sleep.

o~o~o~o~o

"W-what did you do?" Allura asked, as if it weren't blatantly obvious.

"I found the problem, and I fixed it," Lotor answered.

"What do you mean, you fixed it?"

Six quintants had gone by since the Voltron team had fallen afoul of the Zaleph trap, and in that time, Lotor had used his few remaining connections to track down the Voltron team's weakness and eliminate it. Having accomplished that goal, he used the castle encryption code to arrange a meeting, figuring that it was beyond obvious now to his parents that Lotor was working with the alliance in some capacity, so subterfuge was no longer as necessary.

Still, the scene unfolding in the shuttle bay was not quite what Lotor had expected. For one thing, arms were everywhere. What was with this team and all the hugging?

"It was clear to me that Honerva would use the green paladin's father as bait again for another trap. So I found him and brought him here. He cannot be bait if he is not in their possession."

Suddenly, the green paladin threw her arms around Lotor and squeezed rather hard for such a tiny lifeform.

"Okay, okay, I take it all back!" she shouted, squeezing harder. "I officially like you. In fact, you're my new favorite person!"

He looked to Allura for help, but she merely laughed at him.

Later that night, after he'd endured an eternity of back patting and toasts of gratitude and—he shuddered—more hugs, he turned down the light in his chamber back at the Daibazaal base and sat on the edge of his cot. He rubbed his temple, finally able to marginally relax since he'd asked Slav to calculate the likelihood of a trap in the first place.

" _Lotor_?"

He heard her voice in his head, hopeful and unsure, and his heart sank even as he smiled.

"Yes, Allura?"

" _I am so sorry. About Zaleph. You warned me, and I... Well, I was stupid, and it will never happen again._ "

"I understand that life means more to you than it does to me. When you've actually lived ten thousand years, you start to see life as a pattern rather than as a series of individual variables. Keep seeing the variables for as long as you can. Just don't let yourself get hurt in the process."

Allura was silent for a long moment before she said, " _You know, if something good could be said to have come out of the Zaleph disaster, I would say it's discovering this new form of communication_."

"What was it you called that? A good thing inside of a bad?"

" _A silver lining_ ," she said.

"That's right. Silver."

After another few doboshes of silence, Lotor said, "I am still angry at you for putting yourself in unnecessary danger, but…"

" _But_?"

"I want you to reach out to me again if you are ever in distress. I'll always come when you need me."

" _I know_ ," she said.

o~o~o~o~o

In a ship several galaxies away, a druid speaks to her emperor.

"As you know, my lord, I have been studying the young witch for some time. Ever since she destroyed the original komar. Each day her power grows, and she has been harnessing it with greater control. If we are to stop Voltron, we must stop her. She is the heart. Without her, Voltron falls."

"But she is well protected, and not without her own power, as you have observed. How are we to take her?"

"I had the same reservations myself, my lord. But it appears she has earned the favor of our own fallen prince. He cares for her and she for him. If we are to draw her out, we must take what she loves."

"Are you sure it is Lotor she cares for?"

"Very, my lord. Nearly every time she has increased in power since we brought him in from exile has been when he was threatened. She has always shown up at his defense, and he to hers, even when they were lightyears apart."

"If you are sure, then make it so."

"The experience will not be very…pleasant for Prince Lotor."

"That is of no consequence. We all serve the glory of the empire."

"Vrepit sa."


	15. Communication

" _Lotor_."

Lotor jumped, Allura's sudden presence in his mind startling him into bumping his head on the underside of the trans-reality gate's console, which he'd been wiring for a test run later that quintant.

"Ow," he hissed, rubbing his head where he'd hit it. Then alarm set in. "What is it? What's wrong? What do you need?"

" _Oh, nothing's wrong. I just had a question_."

"Yes?" he prompted.

" _I'm attuning the castle's particle barrier to the proper frequency to repel ion blasts from the Thesleh-class battle cruisers. Pidge said it should be 543 terahertz, but I could have sworn I remember it being 656_."

Had she been in the room with him, he'd have stared at her incredulously. As it was, he was staring at the wall incredulously.

"You mind-called me to ask about a terahertz setting for your particle barrier?"

" _Do you not know?_ " The color of her tone in his mind had turned tentative. " _Because I can look it up. I just thought you'd know it straight off_."

Unbelievable.

"It's 543 terahertz," he said.

" _Quiznak. Now I owe Pidge a bottle of Kelfar spirits_."

"Is that all?" he asked pointedly.

" _For now_ ," she responded, and he didn't hear from her for the rest of the quintant.

o~o~o~o~o

" _Lotor_."

Lotor sighed. "Yes, Allura?"

Zethrid arched an eyebrow at him. "Um, I'm Zethrid. Your general, remember? Not a paladin of Voltron."

Lotor gave her a flat look and walked away from the helm to avoid distraction.

"Ohhh, mind-call thingey," Zethrid said, nodding as he left. "Got it."

" _Are you busy?_ "

Lotor pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes, as a matter of fact."

" _With what?_ "

"Treason, obviously. Can I help you with something?"

" _Oh, no. I just wanted to see how things were going_ ," she finished awkwardly. She sounded sheepish, and somehow he got the impression she was wincing. " _With you, I mean. Like, maybe if you needed my help. For something_."

"Did you have anything particular in mind?"

" _No, no. Just checking in_."

"Well, nothing has really changed since yesterday."

" _All right. I just had a little extra time, so I thought I'd ask_."

"I appreciate that."

" _You do? Oh. That's-that's good_."

"Is there anything else?"

"Not at the moment, no."

"Then goodbye, Allura."

" _Goodbye_."

o~o~o~o~o

" _Lotor, can you hear me?_ "

Lotor looked up from the tablet on quantum entanglement theory that Slav had recommended he read.

"Yes, but you sound very faint."

" _I'm testing the distance we can communicate over. We are in the Orien quadrant_."

"That's pretty far," Lotor said, impressed. "What are you doing all the way out there?"

" _Visiting Earth. The paladins are observing a holiday with their families called, er, Thanks…offering, I think. It has to do with burning a bird on some kind of sacrificial altar to thank their gods for a plentiful harvest. That's what Lance said. Pidge said it has to do with arguing with family members over politics_."

"Earthlings seem fairly barbaric at times," Lotor said, giving up on reading and setting the tablet down on the shelf next to his cot.

" _You don't know the half of it. Anyway, I'm in the castle alone, so I figured I'd test our range_."

"Why are you in the castle alone?" he asked, feeling uncomfortable. He knew she could more than take care of herself, but that didn't stop him from worrying that she had no one to watch her back.

" _Lance invited Coran to attend the festivities at his house, and Coran would never pass up the opportunity to experience a new culture, especially_ —"

"Were you not invited as well?" Lotor would have to have yet another discussion with the black paladin, this time about manners, if they stupidly—

" _They all invited me, but_ …" She trailed off, and though the connection was less substantial than usual, he could feel the sorrow in her voice.

"But you decided not to go, because…"

" _Because I was afraid that seeing them with their families_ …"

"Would make you lonely for yours."

She didn't confirm it, but he could feel that he'd guessed correctly.

" _Besides_ ," she said after a tick. " _Earth food is odd_."

He smiled. "Well, what other experiments should we try through our connection? We should make the most of your remote location."

" _There is something I've been wanting to try_ ," she said, her tone changing from wistful to animated.

"What do I need to do?"

" _I'm not sure. Close your eyes maybe? I want to try showing you something that I'm seeing. Like…a video feed_."

"All right," he said, obediently closing his eyes. While he waited for something to happen, he asked, "How did this connection come to be anyway? We've never talked about why we can speak to each other's minds, or how you knew that we would be able to."

" _We were caught in the net, and we needed help. I had already been wondering if you and I might be able to communicate mind to mind, because I had a vague memory of you saying something to me without speaking when I was delirious on Sala. And I had heard stories of ancient Altean mystics who could speak mind to mind. I told myself it could easily be the delirium, that I had imagined you speaking to me that way. I was working up my nerve to test it, but then we were captured, and I needed you, so I reached out_."

"And I answered."

" _And you saved us_."

"Do you have to speak aloud when you speak to my mind?"

" _No, do you?_ "

"I don't know. I have been. The idea of formulating complete sentences in my mind is strange."

" _Try it_."

Lotor hesitated, and something of his reservation must have leaked through the connection.

" _Why are you… Oh. Are you afraid I'll be able to read your thoughts?_ "

"Didn't you just now read my thoughts?" he said sardonically.

" _No, I felt your emotion about something we were specifically talking about. I know you feel mine, too. But are you…hiding things from me?_ "

"I am not hiding anything specifically, but my life is secrets. I never tell anyone everything."

" _I swear to you that I cannot hear anything you do not choose to disclose. But…if it bothers you, I can stop_."

Lotor's eyes flew open. "I didn't say that. I was more concerned about myself, that if I stopped speaking aloud, the boundaries in my own head would blur, and I would send you thoughts without meaning to."

" _Oh, I see. Well, it is up to you, of course, how you communicate through our connection, but for my part, I don't mind if stray thoughts come through. I am interested in any thoughts you choose to share, and obviously, I share everything_."

"Why don't we save testing silent communication for another time?"

" _All right. I would still like to try sending images. Are your eyes closed?_ "

Lotor again closed his eyes. "Yes, you may proceed."

At first he saw nothing, but after a dobosh or two, the haziest ghost of an image appeared in his mind.

"Is it mice? Performing some kind of acrobatic routine?"

" _Yes!_ " Allura crowed, delighted. He'd never heard her voice so happy before. His whole being warmed under it. " _Aren't they adorable? And talented. I just had to share it with you_."

"I'm glad you did, Allura."

o~o~o~o~o

" _Want to try another experiment?_ "

The request came a few quintants after their Thanksoffering test. Lotor had just finished a sparring session with Acxa and had yet to bathe, but he had nowhere else to be at the moment, so he toweled off on his way back to his chamber.

"All right," he sent back. "What is it?"

" _I'd like to try and project my own vision to where you are_."

"Meaning…?"

" _I want to see you. And, er, your surroundings. I figured that it might be helpful during a mission if we could see each other's location_ ," she finished in a rush.

"You want to be able to spy on me, you mean," he said, smiling.

" _No! You know I would never dream of_ —"

"Allura, I was teasing you. I trust you."

" _Oh, um, thanks_ ," she said, her voice sounding breathy. And much more clear, actually. They must have returned from Earth.

"All right. What do you need me to do?"

" _I'm not sure. Try thinking about your surroundings. Look around you_."

He obliged, taking in the paltry few possessions he kept in his chamber at the Daibazaal base.

" _Hmm, that's just sending me images through your eyes. Maybe try thinking the reverse_."

"What do you mean, the 'reverse?'"

" _Think of me. Of bringing me to you_."

And with just those words, his core body temperature suddenly spiked, and he could think of nothing else beyond bringing her to him, to his chamber, that very moment.

" _It worked. I can see you. Are you…not wearing a shirt?_ "

"I was sparring with Acxa," he explained.

" _Oh_ ," she said faintly enough that he wondered if the connection were weakening.

"I can't see you," he said, his entire being clamoring that he needed to do so, that it had been too long, that he couldn't go another quintant without it.

" _Hold on_ … _let me_ …"

And then she was there in the room with him. Grainy and ephemeral, but there, drinking in his appearance as greedily as he was drinking in hers. He itched to touch her, but he knew he dare not or risk sending her tenuous apparition back into the ether of his mind.

She was wearing a dress. He had never seen her in a dress before. It looked strange on her, but also beautiful beyond all comprehension. Her hair was far longer than he'd remembered and curly. He longed to touch it again, run it through his fingers like he had in the shuttle bay when she'd defied her friends and set him free.

" _What are you thinking?_ " she asked.

But instead of responding with words, he projected what he was feeling, holding nothing back. If she wanted to know him, she should know this, too.

A tremor shook her and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he wasn't sure what he'd see, acceptance or censure. But he certainly wasn't expecting the tsunami of her emotion crashing into him, ice where his was fire but just as intense. She wanted to touch him equally as desperately, if not more so.

" _Lotor_ ," she said.

The sound of her saying his name tore through him. He reached out instinctively to pull her to him at the same time as she reached out to do the same. But the second their hands touched, her body evaporated into nothing.

The next thing he heard was her swearing vociferously through their link.

He laughed.

" _I'm glad you find this so amusing_ ," she said, acidly.

"I find every single thing about you irresistible," he said. "But now, I really must shower. Until our next experiment, Princess." He said the last word like a caress.

o~o~o~o~o

" _Are you awake?_ "

Lotor came to awareness instantly, ready for battle. "What is it? Where are you?"

" _I can't sleep, and I'm bored_."

Lotor rubbed his face, tiredness settling in as he leaned back against the wall. "Allura. What time is it?"

" _A few vargas before dawn_."

"You should go back to sleep. I should go back to sleep. We should both be asleep right now."

" _Didn't you tell me on Sala that you could go several quintants without sleep?_ "

"Yes, but it is not preferable."

" _Well, I have a question, and you are not allowed to return to sleep until I receive a satisfactory answer_."

Lotor yawned, far too accustomed to her inquisitiveness by now to be much alarmed. "What is it?"

" _I have examined this juniberry flower you gave me for my birthday every way I can think of. I even gave it to Pidge to run a battery of tests on it, but neither of us could find anything_."

"Were you expecting to?"

" _Well, is there a message incorporated into it somehow? Is there a meaning I should be aware of?_ "

"Allura—"

" _I feel badly asking, that if I were truly worthy of it, I would have been able to figure it out on my own_."

"Allura—"

" _If you could just give me a hint, then I'm sure I could discover the rest_ —"

"Allura! There is no hidden message or meaning that you're missing. I made it for you, because I thought you would like it. Some things are simply gifts. Remember? You taught me that. On Sala."

She didn't answer. Her silence seemed pensive, thoughtful.

"Was that answer satisfactory enough?"

" _Yes. It's just, I have another question_."

"Ask."

She hesitated, which was so unlike her that Lotor wondered if something was wrong.

" _Do you have any lovers?_ " she said finally.

He nearly fell off his cot in surprise, though she had asked him this question once before. And after their most recent experiment, he should have expected the topic to come up again.

"I do not," he said. "My mission comes first. Always. It does not leave room for relationships."

" _But what of non-relationship trysts? Lance calls them 'one-night stands' for some reason_."

Lotor sighed. It wasn't an easy thing to talk about with her. He may not have cared what she thought of him when they first met, but he cared very much now.

"I have had them in the past. Not many, certainly not recently."

" _Why not?_ "

"Because…I prefer a challenge. Or rather, something meaningful. Or maybe both. I don't know, to be honest, because I've never had a moment to think about it."

" _Really. In ten thousand years you've never had even one moment to think about it_."

The sarcasm dripping from her response delighted him.

"Fair point. I'll alter my answer to: I have never had a _reason_ to think about it."

" _And now?_ "

Lotor could easily have hidden behind his mission. He could even have hidden behind the question itself, saying that he would consider it simply because it had been asked. But he knew what she meant, and he wouldn't cheapen their obvious feelings for each other by avoiding answering it.

"Now, I have a reason to think about it."

Her response was silence again, but this time he felt acceptance and resolution from it rather than pensive unease.

" _I have one more question_."

"I will do my best to answer."

" _I always initiate our telepathic discussions. Why do you never reach out to me?_ "

Lotor sat still for a full dobosh, marveling for the millionth time that the princess wanted to talk to him at all, let alone afford him the freedom to initiate contact. His father had killed hers, had destroyed her world, had turned the entire universe upside-down to shake as much quintessence out of it as he could. And Lotor had assisted in that effort for most of his life. Why would she ever want him to reach out for her?

"Honestly, Allura, I just couldn't imagine why you would want to hear from me."

" _Well, I do. I want to hear from you. All right?_ "

"All right."

o~o~o~o~o

"Allura?"

"Y _es, Lotor_ _?_ "

"Are you awake?"


	16. Casualties

Allura cupped the juniberry flower in her hands, gazing at it under lights of various frequencies to see if it changed appearance in any way. Lotor had told her there was no hidden message, but Allura liked how the luminescence sparkled different colors under different frequencies, so she periodically ran the test again just to see it.

"Yes, yes, it's very pretty," Lance said with an annoyed look as he walked onto the bridge and sat down in his seat, propping his feet up on his diagnostics console. "I don't get why you like him more than me. I'm way better looking."

Allura rolled her eyes, tracing the edge of a petal with a reverent fingertip.

"Be that as it may," she said. "You have never personally handcrafted me my favorite flower and then given it to me on my birthday when everyone else forgot."

"A: You never told us it was your birthday, so it wasn't a question of forgetting. And B: What is it with girls and pretty doodads? I could be a jerk and still get all the girls if I had enough space money to buy them shiny things."

Allura turned off the light emitter and swiveled to face Lance. For the good of women everywhere, she couldn't let that stand.

"A: You _are_ a jerk. And B: You've completely missed the point." She strode over to his chair, placed one hand on either side, and leaned menacingly over him. She may even have used her transformational abilities to loom a little larger and make her face a tiny bit sharper and shadowed. "Allow me to spell it out for you, sharp shooter. Women are _people_ and prefer to be treated as such. In other words, the gift is immaterial compared with the time, effort, and thoughtfulness with which it was constructed. You could have all the money in the universe and still be hated by everyone alive. Just ask Zarkon."

For his part, Lance had retreated into his seat, huddling against the cushion with wide eyes and sweat dripping down his face.

"Um, what's going on here?" Pidge said as she walked in from the hall.

Allura pulled back, dropping the transformation with a satisfied smirk at Lance.

"Just giving our friend Lance a little relationship advice."

Pidge glanced over at the table where Allura had left the juniberry and adjusted her glasses. "Ah. I see what happened."

"Something happened?" Hunk said entering with a plate of fresh cookies.

Lance hopped out of his chair and snagged a cookie, his face already resuming its natural bored expression.

"Did you find anything new?" Pidge asked Allura, gesturing to the flower.

"No," she answered with a sigh. "I still feel like I'm missing something, though."

She walked back to the table, leaned against it, and picked up the flower. Pidge walked over to join her.

"Why didn't you ask him?"

To Pidge, the most exciting thing about the flower was that Lotor had made it from trans-reality ore. It killed her that Allura wouldn't ask about it. Allura wasn't even sure why she was reluctant to do so. She'd certainly laid bare all her other thoughts and feelings without reservation. She supposed, if she were being honest, that she was worried if she brought it up, he would regret the decision to give it to her, especially since she was the reason he had lost the rest of the comet in its entirety. She didn't like the idea of him regretting the gift, even for a moment, because, next to the castle, it was her most precious possession. It meant a lot to her that he'd given it to her.

"Earth to Allura. You still with us?"

"What? Oh, yes. Sorry."

"Were you just talking to you-know-who?" Pidge asked in a quieter voice.

"No," she said, wilting a little. "I haven't in a few qunitants. I was just staring off into space."

"Can't say I blame you. I still can't believe you saw him shirtless."

Allura blushed. She hadn't told Pidge everything about that interaction, but she couldn't resist sharing the first part.

"You know, it's too bad it doesn't have a fastener on one side. It would look really cool in your hair."

Allura turned it over to look for a likely place to attach a hair clip when, before her eyes, the petals shifted, and a clasp appeared on the body of the flower.

"What the…?" Pidge said. "It's engineering itself! Just like King Alfor said about the lions."

Allura quickly let down her hair, discarded the plain clip she'd used to hold it, then gathered the white cloud up again, and fastened it with the juniberry. It felt as weightless as the plain clip, despite being made of stone.

"That's pretty quiznaking cool, I gotta admit," Pidge said. "I wonder if it can turn into other things."

"Hey, we're getting a message from somebody in the Drxyl quadrant," Lance said, pointing at the blinking light on his dash.

"The Drxyl quadrant?" Pidge said. "There's not much there, and it's deep in the heart of Galra territory. Who would be calling us from there?"

"Telemarketers," Lance scoffed. "Should I send it to voicemail?"

"Could be Lotor," Hunk said.

"I was thinking the same," Allura agreed. "Put it up on screen."

"It's not encrypted," Lance said.

"Just do it, Lance."

Lance rolled his eyes as he tapped the message to open it.

"Acxa?" Allura said, confused, when the general's no-nonsense expression appeared on the screen.

"Princess Allura—"

"She actually answered?" Zethrid's voice came through from the background. "Ezor, you owe me 60 GAC."

"Shut up, both of you," Acxa hissed, aiming the order over her shoulder.

"I didn't say anything," Ezor said.

Allura hid her smile. It was nice to know she wasn't the only one with aggravating teammates.

"How can we help you, Acxa?" Allura said in her most congenial tone.

"Have you heard from Lotor?" she asked, worry behind her eyes.

Allura's blood ran instantly cold. "No. Not for a few quintants."

"He was supposed to meet us—"

Allura tuned her out, turning her thoughts inward.

" _Lotor?_ " she projected. " _Lotor, it is imperative that you respond_."

Nothing.

Allura instantly pulled up the castle's map of the Drxyl quadrant. "What are your coordinates?" she asked Acxa.

"Why do you want to know?" Acxa asked sharply.

"He's not responding to my attempts to reach him telepathically. If we could retrace his steps, we might be able to locate him."

"He's not a set of lost keys, Allura," Lance said.

"Have you got a better idea?" she snapped at him.

"Actually, I think I might," said Pidge.

Which is how, three vargas later, Allura found herself standing in the castle's pilot circle, surrounded by the other paladins, Coran, and Acxa, with a map of the Galra empire displayed around her and Pidge's Galra tracker attached to her temple through an electrode.

"Brains run on frequencies just like transmission signals. If I can isolate the exact frequency Allura's brain is using to transmit signals to Lotor using the algorithms from the Galra tracker, and then feed that through the transimeter loop the teludav uses to calculate wormhole coordinates, I should be able to triangulate Lotor's location…more or less," said Pidge.

"What do you mean by 'more or less'?" Acxa demanded.

"It's not an exact science, seeing as how I'm literally making it up. I could be right on the nose, or a few lightyears off."

"A few lightyears?"

"It's our best shot at getting anywhere close without Zarkon just calling us up and telling us where he is."

"Let's do it," Allura said, loathe to waste any more time.

"If he's just gone on a mini break somewhere, he's going to be really embarrassed," Hunk said.

"He would never go off mission," Acxa said, though as she did, she cast a look at Allura and sounded somewhat less sure by the end of her statement.

"Everyone quiet. I need to concentrate." Then Allura pictured Lotor in her mind. From the crown of his ruthlessly tenacious head to the thump of his lion's heart to the strength of his dauntless limbs. Every detail, even the perfectly imperfect flaws. Then she reached outward until she felt him, and then brought him to her.

She had her eyes closed at first, so she didn't know she'd succeeded until she heard the gasps around her. Her eyes popped open, but she didn't see him until she looked down.

He was laying on a floor unconscious, his flight suit torn, glowing druid wounds crisscrossing the skin underneath. He was injured, maybe dying. Allura felt detached from reality, as if this were a show and she was merely a spectator who had wandered in late and had no context for the story.

But then he spoke, and somehow the Galra tracker, routed through the bridge's speakers, managed to project a synthetic, distorted version of his words for everyone to hear.

"I can feel you. Don't come for me. Tell Acxa. Mission first."

Allura stared at him, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe. There was no sound as he faded from view. She was frozen, crystallized. The edges of her sight narrowed to a pinpoint. She felt movement near her, a rush of air, and then someone slapped her hard across the face.

"—don't have time for this."

Allura blinked, coming back to the present. "What?" She reached a hand up to her cheek.

Acxa was glaring at her from inside the pilot circle.

"There is no need to get violent," Coran objected sternly.

"Congratulations," Acxa spat. "You've seen your first real casualty."

"I beg your pardon," Allura replied angrily. "My father, my entire world were casualties of this war long before you were even born."

"But this is the first casualty you've witnessed first hand. I've seen the shock it causes a hundred times. I've been through it myself. Until now, you've lived in a bloodless bubble, with sideshows and narrow victories. Lotor is the first person you've cared for that you saw fall with your own eyes. The only way to get past your first casualty is to accept it."

"You keep using the word 'casualty,'" Hunk said. "Doesn't casualty usually mean dead? 'Cause he didn't look that dead to me."

"He might as well be. If Haggar has realized the depths of his betrayal, it is a matter of doboshes before he is killed…or worse."

"Yeah, we don't exactly not rescue people," Lance said leaning cockily against the Galra tracker. "We aren't not rescuing him, right?"

"Pidge, did you get any coordinates?" Shiro asked.

"We got some coordinates," said Pidge. "The connection didn't last long, so I didn't have time to cross-check them."

"Where—" Allura started, but she was interrupted by a signal flashing on the castle's display.

"It's another call," Pidge said. "Wait…this can't be right."

"What?" Shiro asked, moving to read the display over Pidge's shoulder.

"It's from Zarkon's ship. It's a PSA."

"What's a PSA?" Acxa asked.

"It stands for 'public service announcement.' He couldn't call us directly, so he's spamming everyone with a communications satellite."

Shiro tapped the command to project the video feed. Honerva's hooded face appeared on every screen in the room.

"This message is for Allura of Altea. We wish to speak with you regarding a trade. By now, you must be aware of what we have to offer. In exchange, we wish a trifle. We are not asking for Voltron, nor any of the lions. What we ask will not harm any of your friends or require you to return any of the territories you stole from us. All we ask is for you, yourself, to surrender. You for him, even exchange. Rendevous at these coordinates within one varga or we will do something to Prince Lotor that he can never come back from."

Honerva's head faded into a star map with a point of space near the Hjule system highlighted.

"What did she mean 'something he can never come back from'?" Lance asked.

Acxa raised an eyebrow. "Don't you know what Haggar does to Galra commanders who fail Zarkon?"

"Uh, no. That's why I asked."

"She transforms them into destructive robotic monsters and sends them to…"

"Fight Voltron," Pidge finished, face pale.

"You really didn't know?" Acxa said.

Allura thought seeing him hurting and alone, refusing aid, was the worst she could ever feel. But the thought, the very idea, that she might have to kill him herself after he was turned into a mindless, slavish, deadly robeast was more than Allura could bear. She ripped the electrode off her temple by its wire and turned toward the exit that led to Blue.

"Wait, Allura. We should send a cloaked scouting party to scope it out, so we don't repeat the same mistake we made in the Zaleph system," Shiro said.

"That will take too long!" she shot back without stopping. "We must go while we know he is still alive."

"Allura, stop!" called Pidge. But Allura was nearly to the exit, and she wasn't asking for permission. "Wait!" Pidge called again as Allura reached for the door control.

Suddenly something wrapped around her ankles, pulling her legs out from under her. She fell heavily to the floor, all the breath whooshing out of her lungs. As she turned instinctively to engage her attacker, she saw Pidge's bayard fade back from its green whip form to its static handheld form.

"How dare you?" she seethed, getting to her feet.

"I thought you might be interested to know, Princess, that the coordinates Haggar gave us are not the same as the ones I pulled from the Galra tracker," she said, crossing her arms. "Or would you rather just go haring off in the wrong direction?"

o~o~o~o~o

 _Lotor, don't you dare give up on me. Stay yourself as long as you can. Remember the variables. I'm coming for you whether you like it or not._

Allura projected a steady litany of encouragement and occasional threats as she piloted Pidge's cloaked shuttle through open space toward the coordinates the Galra tracker had shown. Acxa was in a similar shuttle at the coordinates that Haggar had given with four of the five lions putting on a show nearby for Zarkon's benefit.

Honerva would of course figure out eventually that the Princess had no intention of showing up, but the goal was to give Allura or Acxa enough time to discover where Lotor was being held without Zarkon's entire fleet standing in the way.

For Allura's part, she wasn't sure Pidge's coordinates had any validity. She was floating in empty space without so much as an asteroid, a cloud of gas, or even a spec of dust to hide a ship or base that might or might not be holding Lotor.

"If I weren't cloaked, I'd be the only thing out here," she mumbled to herself.

Then it hit her.

" _Quiznak!_ "

She hit the dash as she swore repeatedly. Pidge was going to lose her quiznaking mind.

"If you die, Lotor, it is all your fault!" she yelled, though she didn't project that.

She punched the dash to bring up a secure communication channel.

"Pidge!" she yelled. "How do I uncloak another ship that's cloaked?"

"Uh, you don't. Why are you asking that?"

"Lotor's trans-reality ship. The one that was supposedly destroyed during the Zaleph debacle. Could enough of it have survived that Zarkon could reverse engineer the cloaking device?"

"I don't know. I mean, I guess it's possible. They'd only need a fragment of the mainframe to… Oh, quiznak."

"What? What am I missing?" Lance broke in.

"We've been played," Hunk said.

"Worse," Shiro added. "Allura is sitting in a trap all by herself in a _shuttle_ without any weapons."

"We're on our way to you, Princess!" Coran shouted from the castle. "I should have just enough of your energy stored to—"

But it was too late. Zarkon's massive ship and several full-complement fleets decloaked around Allura. The space was so thick with cruisers that it was a miracle Allura hadn't hit one accidentally. And as she watched, squadrons of fighters flew out from their hangars, shooting in strategic succession to flush her out.

Allura dodged one set of fighters only to immediately roll away from another set. It was the asteroid field only worse, because her shield was a joke and she had no guns to fend off attackers that were on collision courses with her without even knowing it themselves. Plus, much like the rebel ship she'd crashed on Sala, the shuttle wasn't meant to leap and dive and roll at the touch of her mind the way that Blue was.

 _Blue!_ she screamed in her mind. _Blue, I need you!_

And before she had even finished the thought, a lion-sized wormhole appeared in the sky, swallowing a few nearby fighters even as Blue sailed through, tearing a swath through the remaining fighters with the freeze ray. The lion must have left the moment Allura realized she was in danger. It might still be several doboshes before the rest of the lions could join her.

Allura aimed the shuttle directly at Blue, preparing for impact. Blue anticipated her and opened her powerful jaws, clamping down her teeth just behind the pilot's seat of the shuttle, effectively decloaking it.

Jarred but unharmed, Allura jumped out of the shuttle and scrambled into her seat in Blue's head.

"All right, Blue," she said. "Let's burn this witch to cinders."

Blue shook off the mangled shuttle even as Allura unleashed all her power, all her pent up rage, and zeroed in on the one thing she cared about right now more than any other: getting to Lotor.

At this thought, a brightly burning light, pink and bronze, appeared in one of the lower deck's in Zarkon's ship. Allura knew instinctively that it was her power showing her where she needed to go. She aimed Blue at the light, and as Blue turned about to follow her command, Allura felt her power build into a protective cocoon around the lion.

Her power consumed her from the inside out. It was a raging inferno of retribution that saw everything and destroyed all in her path. Fighters that swerved anywhere near Blue were instantly disintegrated with lightning bolts of power. Even Zarkon's shield was useless against the blasts. They tore through the ship's shield like electricity through paper.

 _I am coming for you_ , Allura projected. Only this time, she wasn't talking to Lotor, but to his mother. _I am coming for you. And nothing will stand in my way_.

Blue hit the deck below the bright light, punching through the hull and several hallways before sliding to a stop amidst the swath of destruction in their wake. Allura somehow appeared outside her lion without physically climbing out, encased in the same pink glow that surrounded Blue.

Sentries rushed her, but she flung them away with a wave of her hand. Her bayard formed itself into a staff, and she fought her way through a battalion of Galra soldiers, as Blue fought down-ship, guarding her back.

A druid appeared from a side corridor and knocked her off her feet with a bolt of dark magic. She rolled back up to standing, but in the process, lost her staff. During her attempt to recover the bayard, another druid appeared and knocked it too far out of reach, even as he forced her off her feet again with another bolt of magic.

Enraged, Allura ripped the juniberry from her hair. It transformed instantly into a weapon, its pistil lengthening into a curved blade, its stem into a well balanced staff. She twirled the weapon, adjusting to its heft even has she brought the blade down and through the second druid. The druid imploded in a ball of dark energy as he died, sending a shockwave through the corridor that knocked the other druid off his feet.

The juniberry blade glowed with reflected magic. Allura's hair floated around her as energy crackled through it. Part of her wondered what had happened to her helmet, but most of her didn't care. She seemed to be breathing fine without it, despite the hull breach behind her.

As she fought her way closer to the burning light that marked Lotor's location, she fed her rage with images of her father during the last battle for Altea, her friends suffering through one attack after another, the Balmera wounded and dying, the ruins of the Altean home world, and finally, Lotor, battered and close to death, begging her to leave him to his parents' nonexistent mercy.

Well, there would be no mercy, no quarter, from Allura either. Not this time. She felt a small measure of pity for the witch and the emperor. They had not intended what they became. But they made their choices, and Allura would be the force of justice that ended their empire.

When she reached Lotor's cell, he was strapped to an inclined table, hooked to machines, pale and unconscious and covered in electrical burns and gashes. After registering his presence, she took in the room's other occupants—no fewer than twelve druids in a circle around the edge of the room, and Honerva, head druid herself, come to meet her.

"Thank you, my dear, for so graciously accepting my invitation," said the witch. "My son is quite taken with you, you know. He won't stop talking about you, even in his sleep. Allura this, and Allura that. You've made quite the impression.

"And I can see why. The raw power that you wield is impressive. Not unheard-of, but adequate. With some training, you might be a competent addition to my druid circle."

"Don't be ridiculous," Allura scoffed. "You're not fooling me."

She jabbed at Honerva with the juniberry blade, but Honerva avoided the strike by teleporting to the left just in time. Allura had expected the feint, though, and used her momentum to swing the blade in a circle and through a druid standing along the room's rim. The druid, not expecting the attack, had no magical defense spooled and waiting, so he collapsed and died as any Galra would, in a heap of blood and bone, rather than imploding.

Honerva's expression turned sour. "Your manners could use some work as well, girl."

"I am a princess of Altea and a paladin of Voltron," she said as she whirled to face the witch again. "And I will take back what is mine."

"Over my dead body," said the witch.

"As you wish." Allura raised the blade to strike.

"Now!" the witch screamed.

Suddenly, Allura was hit with streams of the sucking, draining force that she remembered from being trapped in the komar web.

She screamed, dropping to a knee and leaning against the juniberry staff for support. Blue echoed her scream a few decks below, responding to her paladin's distress. But Blue would never make it in time to save her. She had to defeat the komar on her own.

Her heart quailed at the thought. She had barely survived it last time. Lotor had rescued her in Zaleph. How could she defeat it alone?

But then a thought caught her memory. A discussion she'd had with Lotor afterward about how he'd deactivated the net. What had Lotor told her? That it had been weakest at its attachment points? But there were no generators in the room.

 _The druids_. They were channeling the komar's energy. That's why they were standing in a circle around her. She would have to stop them to stop the komar. But how could she defeat all twelve at once? Even at full power, she would struggle to defeat that many magic wielders on her own.

She cast desperately around in her mind for a tool she could use, something that wasn't dependent on her power to wield it. At least not completely.

Then the juniberry staff morphed again, growing a thorn that pierced the skin of her hand. She stared at the drop of blood as her life-forced drained away. She felt as if all color were draining from her body, all music, all joy. But in one last flash of insight, she realized what the juniberry was trying to tell her.

She bowed her head, both hands circling the juniberry staff, the _trans-reality_ juniberry staff. She concentrated all her remaining energy on the image of what she needed the weapon to do. Then, at the last second, when static began coating her vision and cloth muffled her ears and her breathing grew increasingly labored, she let go, praying it was enough.

She fell to the floor, head ringing, but even as her body hit the cold metal, she felt the life-draining force dissipating, and then vanishing entirely.

"Nooooo!" the witch screamed, dropping to her knees, a barb the color of juniberry blooms on feast day bursting from chest. Her claw-like hand pulled it free, and it clanked to the floor covered in her blood as she teleported away from the room.

The other druids had crumpled to the floor as well, each with a juniberry barb protruding from his forehead, neck, or chest. Beyond exhausted and with little energy left, she crawled across the floor to the table Lotor was strapped to. She undid the clasps with shaky hands, sparks of her power zapping things occasionally, like snaps of static electricity.

"I'm going to get you out of here," she said to his still unconscious body.

Once free of the shackles, he curled forward over Allura's shoulder. But being weak as a newborn klotenseal, she collapsed under his weight and couldn't carry him. She waited until Blue showed up to move again. Then as she pulled Lotor across the floor toward the lion, whose massive head took up the entire corridor and the deck above besides, she saw something sparkling off to the right. Leaving Lotor for a moment to investigate, she discovered the juniberry in its original form waiting for her to scoop it up.

"Form hair clip," she croaked hoarsely. It obliged, and she pulled her hair haphazardly out of her face and fastened it. Feeling marginally more together, she crawled back to Lotor and began the long tugging process again.

When she finally got herself and Lotor back into Blue, both her helmet and bayard were present and accounted for. She plunked her helmet back on and winced immediately at the cacophony of noise erupting through the communicators.

"Six fighters on your six, Lance!"

"I'll cover you, Hunk. Pulverize that cruiser!"

Allura cleared her throat, almost too exhausted to speak.

"I've got Lotor," she said. "Let's get the quiznak out of here."

"Woohoo!" Lance crowed. "It's about time!"

"What did you do to the lower half of Zarkon's ship?" Hunk asked in an awed tone. "It's, like, completely gone."

"Debrief later," she said. "Lotor's injured."

"And it's not like we're not struggling to cut through all these fighters," Shiro said as the black lion blasted another two fighters into dust. "Coran, warm up the teludav. Pidge, cut us a path back to the castle."

"On it," Pidge said, just as Coran said, "It's all heated up and ready to go!"

Allura leaned back in her seat and let Blue take over, trusting the lion to get them safely back home. Then she rolled to the side and reached for Lotor, whom she'd dumped unceremoniously face down on the floor next to her chair. She curled her hand under his bicep and squeezed, more for her own reassurance than for his.

"Almost there, my heart," she said, and then she passed out.


	17. Claiming

_Remember. There is no purpose without_ … _Remember the variables_. _There is no purpose without_ … _The variables. Remember_.

o~o~o~o~o

"Allura, what are you doing out of bed? You should be resting. Again. Still."

Coran had come upon her perched on the steps, in her nightclothes, in front of the cryo pod that held Lotor. Healing him, she hoped. The rest of the castle was ghostly quiet. There were too many ghosts. The last thing these high-tech, magical halls needed was another haunt.

"I can't sleep, Coran. Not until he wakes up."

"You must, princess, because he very well may not."

"Hush. What if he hears you?"

"That's just it." Coran stepped to the diagnostics panel continuously measuring every known Galra and Altean health metric. He tapped a few screens to bring up the detailed views.

"Every test we've run shows that his wounds have healed completely over the last 23 vargas. Every test but one—neural activity. His brain is all but nonfunctional, aside from basic homeostatic responses."

"Meaning he can breathe on his own," she pointed out. "If he has that much, then he can get the rest back."

"That's a pretty big leap, Allura. Even for a glass-is-half-full kind of a guy like me."

Allura rose and touched the crystal barrier between herself and Lotor. She had tried to reach him telepathically. Briefly. Once. She told herself she was holding off until his external trauma had healed, because she didn't want to tax him too much. But that wasn't really why. She was afraid to find out that there was nothing left to reach out to.

She squared her shoulders, resolute. This was no time for indulging in fear. If he was still alive, there was still hope. She would bring him back by his hair if she had to.

"He has been in there long enough," she said. "Help me move him to my quarters."

"Didn't you hear me? He's gone."

"We don't know that," she said, quietly.

"The scans are pretty straightfor—"

"We don't know that!" Her voice rang through the empty halls like a battle cry.

Coran didn't flinch, but he looked sad. Allura immediately regretted yelling, so she softened her tone.

"If science can't bring him back, maybe magic can. Please help me get him to my quarters."

Coran still seemed doubtful, but he sighed, capitulating. "All right, Allura."

"Thank you, Coran," she said, heart heavy.

"It is a pleasure to serve, your highness."

o~o~o~o~o

 _Remember_.

Lotor fisted his chubby hands into her hair. She was smiles. She was safety. She smelled good. He burbled happily, wet on his hand. She swept him up into her arms. He laughed.

The tooth and claw leapt to her shoulder, staring at him through slit eyes. He did not like the tooth and claw. It smelled wrong, like sick, like outrage. He started to cry.

 _There is no purpose_ …

"Drink it. It's good for you," she said, handing him his favorite cup, as if the wrapping would make him more amenable.

"I don't want to drink it, mother. It tastes foul."

"Drink," she said sternly. She was often stern, but she smiled, too. Less of late, but she was working so much that Lotor barely saw her.

"Did you finish your lessons?" she asked as he complied, pressing the cup to his lips and swallowing the thick liquid as quickly as he could.

"All but quantum physics," he admitted. "It's just, father got me a new sword, and—"

"You can train with your father when your lessons are complete."

Lotor sighed. "Yes, mother."

"Lotor, you are seven years old. You should be past quantum mechanics by now."

Lotor wriggled uncomfortably under her glare. He hated disappointing his parents.

"We shall have to intervene if you do not improve your performance substantially in the next few moon cycles."

"Yes, mother," he whispered, worried. The last intervention had not been pleasant.

"We must find a way to get through to you. You are Prince of Galra. You must excel beyond expectations."

"I will, mother."

"See that you do."

 _There is no purpose without_ …

"Prince Lotor."

"King Alfor?" Lotor said, confused. When the sentry had summoned him, he hadn't expected an off-world royal.

"I'm so sorry. It's about your parents."

"What about them?"

"The quintessence. It was too much. It consumed them. There was nothing we could do."

Lotor took this news without reacting. Reaction led to punishment. Besides, nineteen years as his parents' son had led him to expect anything and assume nothing.

King Alfor laid his hand on Lotor's shoulder. For a tick, Lotor expected a blow, but he stood stoically, waiting.

"I'm so sorry," the king said again, pain and sorrow suffusing his expression.

Lotor was confident his own expression betrayed nothing.

 _Remember_.

o~o~o~o~o

"Listen, Prince of Galra. I know every bawdy verse of The High Priest Sailed to Xankrous, and I am not afraid to use them."

Allura pressed her chin into her palm, her elbow on the bed, just even with Lotor's shoulder. She had devolved from rational arguments to outright pleading to the nastiest threats she could think of. But Lotor was impervious to salacious lyrics, it appeared.

Telepathically, he wasn't answering. Calling him to her hadn't worked. He was there, lying in front of her, and her power knew enough not to duplicate his image.

She lifted his hand, strong and now undamaged. She examined it, rotating the wrist and forearm to see the palm as well as the knuckles. His purple skin was smooth and unlined, despite the passage of time and many battles. The cryo pod might have helped a little in that regard. It had a propensity to erase little nicks and scars.

After she'd examined every molecule of it, she raised his hand to her cheek, resting it there. Eyes closed, she imagined tentacles of her power reaching through his skin, through muscle and bone, down to his nervous system. It was a fact-finding mission, a test. She wouldn't change, just observe.

She saw synapses firing in his spinal cord, which gave her hope. But it was only a body process. It wasn't _him_.

She unclipped the juniberry from its place in her hair and placed it in his palm, curling his fingers around it, and then placing hers on top.

"Can you help me?" she asked the flower. But it did nothing in response. This knot was for Allura alone to untangle, and she could feel time slipping away from her. As if there were a limit, and it wasn't long.

"I'm looking for your consciousness," she said to Lotor. "Which, sadly, is impossible to pinpoint with science. I cannot find it with any of the six senses I possess. Not even magic can locate a spirit."

 _My spirit will find your spirit_.

Allura's heartbeat quickened. The ancient Altean farewell.

"Of course," she whispered.

o~o~o~o~o

 _Remember_.

Despite everything, Lotor had never wished his father dead until that moment. Oddly, it wasn't a fraught moment. In fact, his father wasn't doing anything particularly cruel. He was giving orders to his generals on the eve of battle with the thirty-sixth star system Zarkon had determined it was his right to conquer.

Lotor didn't have any partiality to the system. He hadn't so much as visited it until a few quintants ago when he was sent to covertly assess their defenses (light cannon, scattered infantry, a fleet comprised mostly of converted frigates). He also rarely felt much in the way of emotion, generally speaking, so it wasn't empathy that had spurred the patricidal thought.

Nor was it self-interest. Since Zarkon and Honerva's transformation at the gate, they seemed to have forgotten about Lotor altogether. It was the best his relationship had been with them since he was old enough to retain memory.

There was no justification at all for the feeling, just an understanding, a certainty, that the universe would be better off if his father had died with Daibazaal. And on the heels of that understanding, that Lotor himself wished that his father had perished.

The realization was such a simple, emotionless thing, like noticing a cloud that had obscured the sun had moved aside. A small, routine discovery. But now that the thought had finally penetrated through to his conscious mind, Lotor was faced with its ramifications.

Zarkon should have died as Alfor had believed he had. Now he was so powerful and held so much sway that he was virtually indestructible. Lotor had no idea how such a feat as destroying the monster his father had become could be accomplished. He only knew that it needed to be done.

And the only one with the access and the strength to do it was Lotor.

 _The variables_.

It was supposed to be a routine inspection on a stable planet. Commander Throloc had been in charge for a decaphebe, at least, and the number of insurrections had died down from two or three a year to barely a skirmish on the occasional feast day.

Lotor didn't exactly enjoy the trappings of this part of the job. Parades were dull and the sycophantic fawning was an irritating reminder that he still had no plan for how to eliminate his father.

But parades and fawning were the last things on Throloc's mind, it appeared. Lotor and his subordinates touched down in the middle of a public execution. A Galra man and a Uulite woman were tied to pillars of rystanite—a bicarbonate so powerful that it burned through any organic material that touched it.

"Cut these people down at once," Lotor ordered, though he usually followed a strict non-involvement protocol with regards to issues of people management. "For what crime are they being punished?"

"For the crime of procreating outside their species," said Throloc, stepping down from the dais where he'd been observing the torture scene, pushing a much smaller being to the ground in front of him.

Lotor drew his sword. "There is no law forbidding interspecies families."

"It is natural law they offended," Throloc insisted, far from cowed by Lotor's status as prince.

Throloc was large and had clearly once been a soldier in fighting form. But Lotor could tell from the stoop to his shoulders, the sway in his stance, and his lack of weapon, that he had grown soft since switching to planetside work.

"Cut them down, or I will," Lotor said, his voice deadly calm.

Throloc smirked. "It is too late. The moment their skin touched the rystanite, they were dead."

The small being mewled pitifully at Throloc's feet.

Lotor knew this to be true, but he was not about to let the commander's disobedience stand. The square was full of people, Galra and Uulite, all witnesses to the scene unfolding.

Lotor considered his options with cool precision. He knew even the small force he'd brought with him could take the city. Very little upset him anymore, but this abuse was beyond the pale. Fear was not a sustainable nor profitable way to run a planet.

"You brought this on yourself," Lotor said coldly. "I relieve you of command, effective immediately."

"You and what ar—?"

Lotor sliced off the murderer's head with a single swing of his sword.

"I don't need an army," he hissed.

The small creature yelped as the ex-commander's body fell too near it, and it scuttled back into Lotor's shins.

Lotor reached down and lifted the creature to its feet by the nape of its neck. He captured its gaze with his.

"They are gone," he said, not softly, but not harshly either. "I will ensure they receive every honor in burial. In exchange, you will work for me. In time, you will learn to fight, to plan, to fly, and to kill. And when the time is right, you will exact your revenge in the way you see fit. Does that sound like an equitable arrangement?"

The creature nodded it's filthy, blood- and dirt-encrusted head.

"What is your name?"

"Acxa," she said with a squeak.

"Welcome to the void, Acxa."

 _There is no purpose without… The variables. Remember_.

Allura, snow in her hair, laughing

Remember.

"I knew you would come for it," Honerva said, a stone the size of a boulder levitating from her palm. "Shall we talk terms?"

o~o~o~o~o

Allura crawled onto the bed next to Lotor, resting her head on his shoulder. She placed her hand on his chest over his heart. Then she closed her eyes.

She pictured a juniberry bud, closed and delicate. She watched it mature as her mind forwarded time, the petals peeled back, opening to an imaginary sun. Then she tilted the flower so she could gaze into its depths, letting her conscious mind drift and lose focus, accessing the deeper well of meaning inside the core of her being.

Then slowly, still drifting, she moved in a direction that felt right. Not up or down. Not port or starboard, aft or stern. Just…good.

Gradually, she felt another energy brushing up against hers. It felt almost like a humming, a broken humming, a burnt and sorrowful humming. But she knew it, and felt connection, affection, and something more that she couldn't name. She drifted closer, intentionally merging her edges with its edges. Closer was important. Closer. Until there were no more edges, no more division, only one energy where there had been two.

Then she opened her eyes. Still fuzzy around the edges of consciousness, her vision seemed clouded, as if she were looking at a memory of someone else's memory. She tried to avoid focusing, afraid that she'd sever the connection with too much analytical thought. She still wasn't positive that what she was doing would in any way help to bring Lotor back. But one thing was certain—she had at least found him. Because standing not more than a span from her in either direction were Lotor and Honerva.

A sword, flickering, appeared in Lotor's hand.

"Come now, Lotor," the Honerva apparition said. "There is no need for a weapon. It is disrespectful. Perhaps it is time for another intervention."

Honerva struck without warning, dark bolts of magical energy piercing his flight suit and leaving glowing streaks of damage across his body. He fell to his knees, sword flickering into nothingness.

"No!" Allura yelled, running to him…and passing right through. She had no corporeal presence in this reality, whatever it was.

"Is this really how it ends, Lotor? With you fulfilling your destiny as prince of the greatest empire that ever existed by serving as bait to catch a princess?"

Lotor began to laugh, a broken, wheezing laugh. "If that is your goal, I can save you the trouble. Her entire purpose is to kill you. She will do it, and in a way you least expect. But she will not in any way endanger that purpose for anyone, let alone me. You might as well kill me."

Honerva struck him again, this time with a network of smaller bolts that attacked points all over his body at once. He screamed.

"You are mistaken, my child. You have both revealed your feelings for each other too often and to too large an extent. The princess will come for you, and she will come alone."

Suddenly, Lotor whipped out a dagger, aiming it at his own throat.

Allura gasped, too stunned and sickened to move, but Honerva was much more used to the tactics of her torture victims and lazily knocked the knife out of his hands with her magic. Then she glided forward and slapped Lotor across the face. He fell to the floor.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?" she hissed down at him.

Allura ran to him again, circling her arms around him, begging him to see her, to feel her.

"I can feel you," he croaked. "Don't come for me. Tell Acxa. Mission first."

Then Honerva pelted him with magic again, and the room they were in started to fade away, like an echo losing strength, diminishing into silence.

"No!" Allura shouted. She was losing him. She had to do something to pull him out before the scene faded entirely.

"Listen to me, Lotor. Your mother is not here. But I am. I am real. We are real. This—" she gestured to the narrowing room "—is just a memory. I rescued you. Blue and I rescued you. And Pidge helped. You're in the castle with me. In my bed, actually."

"Mission first…Acxa," he mumbled.

"Yes!" Allura shouted, seizing the idea of something so important to him that it might draw his attention. "Your mission is in danger. Acxa said she can't complete it without you. You must come back with me, soldier, or all will be lost."

But it wasn't working. He was starting to fade now as well.

"Lotor! You quiznaking moron! How dare you doubt my ability to save your sorry—"

He made a sound then. Another wheezing chuckle, she thought. Hope lit in her chest as she bent low over his beautiful head and said,

"If you fade, then I will fade. We will die here together. Because I. Will. Not. Leave. You." Her voice shook with a depth of emotion she had never felt before. "And then I will spend the rest of eternity cursing at you until your ghost-ears bleed."

Then a sensation of severe vertigo took hold of her, turning her in a loop and then inside out. The next thing she knew, she was blinking her physical eyes, trying to reorient to the fact that she was back in her bedroom, lying next to Lotor, and that he was gazing back at her.

"All right, princess. I yield," he said, smiling fondly.

And suddenly it was all too much. She burst into tears and threw herself into his arms.

o~o~o~o~o

"It's all right, Allura." Lotor patted the princess's back awkwardly. He much preferred the swearing to the crying.

She pulled back quickly and punched him in the arm.

"Ow. What was that for?"

"You almost died!"

"Well, I was being attacked by a powerful witch at—"

"You tried to kill yourself!"

He sighed and sat up more fully in the bed. Oddly, his body didn't hurt. He felt completely fine. Better than fine. How long had he been out?

"Yes," he answered her. "And I would again if I thought it would save you."

"That is _unacceptable_. Never do that again. Besides, whatever happened to 'mission first'?"

He supposed she had a marginal point there. However.

"My mission shifted," he said, touching her hair where it spilled over his lap. "It's mostly the same but with a different reason at its heart." He paused, tracing the bruise on her cheek with his eyes. He couldn't get enough of just _looking_ at her. "I would die for you, Allura of Altea."

She buried her head in his chest. "You will never get the opportunity," she said. "I will always save you."

He wrapped his arms around her, though he ached with the knowledge that it was only temporary. That she couldn't save him from what was coming, from the choice he would have to make.

"This fairy tale is not ours to live, princess."

"I know," she said, wrapping her arms under his to pull him closer. "But it doesn't change how I feel."

"You will change. The universe moves on."

"Not me. When Alteans form a bond, it is for life."

He smirked at her melodramatic tone. "This is true of all Alteans?"

"It is true of this Altean."

He laid his cheek against her head in defeat. "There is nothing in the universe that I could ask for myself that I would want more…"

A few ticks later, Allura said, "But…?"

"But we are the only hope for the universe."

She snorted. "The universe can rot for all I care."

Lotor chuckled, relishing the feel of her body against his, the smell of her hair, the sting in her voice as she parroted his words from that day on Sala back at him. It killed him that in a matter of vargas he would have to give this up. He hadn't felt this _safe_ in ten thousand years.

Somehow, without him even noticing, Allura, strange princess of a dead world, had become his home.

o~o~o~o~o

Three vargas later, Allura watched with a horrible ripping sensation in her chest as the Sincline ship flew Lotor away from her.

"Well, you did it, Allura," Coran said, coming up behind her and putting his hand on her shoulder. "I should really stop being surprised at the number and manner of miracles you perform on a near daily basis."

"It was luck this time," she touched the juniberry clip in her hair absently. "Too much luck and too close a call."

"So are you together now?" Lance asked, slouching up from behind her to her other side.

"No," she said. "But neither are we alone."

 _One day, though_ , she projected to Lotor, packing every feeling and intention she could into the words.

 _One day_.


	18. The Gate

A light knock woke Lotor from an even lighter sleep.

"Come in," he said, rising to a seated position on the edge of his cot.

Slav's mournful head poked past the cracked-open door. He looked even more worried than usual, if that were possible.

"It's time," Slav said.

Lotor nodded. He could have delayed it, asked complicating questions, verified and triple-checked all the equations. He would give anything for it to not be time, to never be time. Which was ironic, given that, not even a year ago, this moment couldn't come fast enough. That had all changed when he'd made a gut decision to go back for an unmarked rebel ship fleeing a moon base near Sala.

"Thank you, Slav," he said.

"Do you need—?"

"You have a job to do, do you not?"

Slav left without another word.

It took everything in Lotor's power to _not_ reach out to Allura. Just once more. To hear her say his name would give him the courage he needed for what would have to happen next. But it would also make it immeasurably harder. For both of them.

So instead, he initiated one final experiment on their telepathic bond.

He blocked her.

Within seven doboshes, he was dressed and had gathered his gear. He headed to the hangar, hoping Acxa wouldn't be there. It wouldn't be any easier to say goodbye to her than it would to Allura.

"Are you sure about this?" Acxa asked him as he entered the hangar. So much for that hope.

"We have been over this, Acxa," he answered with a sigh as he began prepping the Sincline ship for launch. "It has to be closed. There is not enough ore to close it from this side. The only trans-reality material of significant size we have left is the ship." He stroked the hull as lights flicked on in the cabin. "Someone has to pilot it. And that someone has to be me."

"It doesn't _have_ to be you. It could be a programmed sentry."

Lotor sighed. "Sentries malfunction. All the time. Even if it didn't, the programming required to close the gate is intricate and could easily fail. We have one shot at this, Acxa. One. I have to be there to adapt the plan if something unexpected occurs."

"Then let me go," she said, her voice projecting louder than usual to cover her fear. "You are the heir to the Galra throne. Our people will need a leader when Zarkon is gone."

"Acxa," he said, gripping her shoulder. "You are the finest warrior I have ever trained. If I would trust anyone with the fate of the universe, it would be you. But you know why it has to be me."

"Because of the quintessence," she said, reluctantly. Then, mutinously she added, "But you are _nothing_ like your father."

"I have almost been my father many times," he corrected her. "And if I live another ten thousand years, who's to say that I wouldn't end up with the same disease as my parents? No one should live beyond the natural limit of their species' normal lifespan." He smiled, a half-turn up at the corner of his lips. "Not even if they are somewhat tolerable and rakishly attractive."

His attempt at humorous deflection failed, however, if Acxa's grave expression was anything to go by.

"Have you told her?" she asked.

To avoid answering, Lotor stowed his gear behind the pilot's seat, hoping he wouldn't need it. A quick death would be preferable to the alternative.

"You haven't told her," Acxa said, her tone accusatory.

"There is nothing to say that has not already been said."

"If this weren't possibly the last time I was going to see you, I would tell you I was disappointed in you," she said.

"I don't mind if you're disappointed in me as long as you follow your orders."

"She deserves to know."

"She would only try to stop me."

"I would stop you if I had the power to. With more time, we might get lucky and—"

"Every moment we don't act is a moment that an interspecies couple is murdered, leaving their daughter an orphan to fend for herself."

She gaped at him as if he'd slapped her. "That is _not fair_ , Lotor. You have never used that against me before."

"I'm not using it against you now. It is just the truth."

"There will always be some measure of injustice, anguish, and loss in the universe. Ridding it of Zarkon will not change that."

"Perhaps not, but it would greatly reduce the amount of each. Besides, the longer we sit here debating, the longer Honerva has to sniff out our secret. If they find the gate, we're finished. It's over."

Acxa had no answer for that. But she wasn't moving out of the way, either.

"You know all this already, Acxa. Why are you dredging it all up again now?"

Acxa sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Isn't it obvious, sir?"

"Clearly, it isn't obvious or I wouldn't have asked."

"I'm stalling," she said, her tone irritated at his obtuseness.

"What? Why?"

"Because _I_ told her," Acxa said. "And she's on her way here now to talk some sense into your thick, rakishly attractive skull."

Lotor stared at his second in command for a full dobosh without moving. Acxa's betrayal raised the specter of Narti between them. She must be wondering how he would react this time. She looked nervous, but she didn't draw a weapon to defend herself. She stood with her chin high, daring him to punish her for trying to save his stupid life. She should know better by now. She _did_ know better, which was why she hadn't drawn a weapon.

"Fantastic," he said, finally, glaring at her. "I suppose I should thank you for making at least one goodbye a little easier."

Her lips tightened, but she nodded. "Yes, sir."

He slammed on his helmet before he had the chance to say anything else he'd regret.

"Get to your stations, everyone," he said to his team, aside from Acxa, through the helmet's communicator as he climbed into the ship's cockpit. "Zarkon's fleet will arrive in 19.8 doboshes. And it appears that the paladins will be paying us a surprise visit as well. Let's extend them a warm welcome, shall we?"

To her credit, Ezor only hesitated a tick before answering. "Readying the ion cannons now, sir."

"Brilliant," he said as he piloted the ship out of the hangar and engaged the cloaking device.

o~o~o~o~o

Allura was about to commit her first murder. She had killed before, of course, in battle, defending herself and her people against tyranny and death. But she had never been so overtaken by rage that she had fantasized about killing any specific person, not even Zarkon. Until now.

"It isn't like you to rush headlong into battle without a plan," Shiro reminded her. Needlessly.

"I just pulled the man out of death's gaping jaws. I am not about to let him dive right back in," she said as she snapped her gauntlet into place and checked that her repaired bayard was ready for use.

"But it's not just Lotor we're up against," Hunk chimed in. "Acxa said it's Zarkon's entire army. If Lotor really did rebuild a trans-reality gate, and he has a ship that can navigate it, Zarkon doesn't really need Voltron anymore to have access to all the quintessence he could ever…"

Pidge looked up from the data she was pulling from the castle's nav system to give Hunk a meaningful glare.

"Oh, wait," he said. "I think I just argued us back around to going, didn't I?"

"All right, I'm in," Lance said with a devilish smile. "As long as there will be shooting."

"Thanks for the vote, Lance," Allura said and meant it.

Shiro sighed. "We're going to need backup. Lots of backup."

"I'll get on the horn and round up the troops," Coran said, twirling his mustache.

Pidge rolled her eyes. "Who gave him access to Earth's old war-movie channel?"

Hunk and Lance shot guilty expressions at each other, but Coran had already left to warm up the teludav.

The others left the lounge soon after to suit up, leaving Shiro and Allura alone.

"Allura, I get why you want to save him, I do."

Allura had a feeling she knew where this was going, and she would not entertain it.

"Believe it or not, I want to save him, too," Shiro continued. "He seems like a decent guy, despite everything, and that's saying a lot, given his history."

 _A decent guy_. Without question, the earthling characteristic that drove her most to distraction was their complete lack of perspective. Allura continued to ignore him as she rounded up her gear to head to the bridge. But as she tried to pass Shiro to leave the room, he stopped her.

"All I'm saying, Allura, is that of course we will try to save him. But—"

"But what?" she snarled at him.

"You hold on so tight. To all of us. To everything. And I get why. But at some point, you're going to have to let go of something. Maybe it's not Lotor. Or maybe it is Lotor, but it's not today. Either way, I want you to be— No, I _need_ you to be prepared if and when it happens. You are too important to lose. And your power…"

"What about it?" Allura said, defiant and dying inside at the same time.

"Frankly, your power scares me. What happens if you lose yourself? If you lose control of your emotions? What if you are so stricken by grief that you go off like a bomb? What then?"

Allura resisted the urge to snap a rebuttal, taking a long, measured breath instead.

"I understand what you are saying. And it is your duty as leader of this team to protect it—"

"And you," he interjected.

"Yes, I know," she gave him a small smile that did not reach her eyes. "But I do not know how to answer you. I don't know if I can…" She paused, waiting for her voice to steady, the prick of tears to recede. "I don't know if I can withstand losing him." Her gaze flicked up to Shiro's, assessing his response.

"There has to be a way," Shiro said softly. "Find it."

Less than a varga later, the lions pulled out of the wormhole and into normal space next to the ruins of Daibazaal. It made sense that Lotor had chosen the location so near to the original trans-reality gate. He could reuse materials from what was left of the original gate.

But it still hurt her to see the planet in pieces. Her father had done that. He'd thought it was the right decision at the time, but Allura wondered if she would have chosen a different path in his place.

"Looks like we're the first ones to the party, but that won't last long. Let's get in position," Shiro said.

Allura flew Blue closer to the others who were setting up a perimeter around the new gate, which Allura could see even from this distance. It was massive. It dwarfed the battle cruiser floating just outside of Daibazaal's orbit, looking easily as large as Zarkon's citadel ship, if not more so.

"What's he planning?" Lance said. "To suck Zarkon through the gate and trap him on the other side like space garbage? Because we kinda tried a version of that already, and it didn't work out so well."

"Acxa said that they intend to flood Zarkon's ship with pure quintessence."

"That's crazy!" Hunk said. "Won't that just make them even more immortal than they already are?"

Lance scoffed. "You can't get double-immortal." He paused. "Can you?"

"Actually," Pidge chimed in. "It sort of makes sense, from a string theory perspective. It seems counterintuitive, but when you factor in the vibrational state of the particles in relation to the gravitons—"

"It doesn't matter," Allura interrupted, as she brought Blue around to face the monstrosity that threatened to take Lotor away from her. Again. "We're destroying it, so his theory will never be tested."

Then she opened a frequency to hail Lotor's cruiser.

"Prince Lotor. I demand an audience at once."

Her view screen lit up with Zethrid's face.

"Prince Lotor isn't here right now, Princess Paladin. May I take a message?"

Allura wanted to scream at the woman, demand his location, basically throw a complete tantrum. But she took a breath. Acxa had told her it wouldn't be easy.

"I demand that you destroy that trans-reality gate immediately."

"Uh, seeing as we just finished building it, I'm going to say no."

"Destroy it now, or we will!" Allura said, her anger flaring.

"You'll have to go through us, I'm afraid," Zethrid said, almost apologetic.

"Do you really think you can stop Voltron with one paltry Galra cruiser?" Allura demanded.

"Do you really think you can destroy a ship full of your friends and allies?" Zethrid shot back quickly but without ire.

For her part, Allura's anger flickered out in an instant, her stomach sinking. Could she follow through on her threat when the people on that ship had risked their lives, losing comrades in the process, to save her team?

"The gate must be destroyed before Zarkon arrives," Allura said in a calmer tone. "If he gains control of it, we will never be able to defeat him."

"Lotor thinks it's the only way to defeat him."

Allura paused, finding Zethrid's use of the words 'Lotor thinks' promising. "What do you think?"

Zethrid looked momentarily taken aback. "I believe in Lotor," she said finally. "You should, too."

"Even if it means we lose him?" Allura said, her voice breaking.

Zethrid didn't answer for several ticks. Then she said, "We are moving forward with our plan. You can either help us or get out of our way."

"I want to talk to him. Please."

Zethrid sighed. "I'm sorry, Princess. I only have a vague idea of where he is, and he's not talking to anybody."

"There must be some way to contact him."

"Don't you have some kind of, I don't know, mind-connection you could use?"

Allura scowled, feeling the beginnings of irritation again. "He's not answering. And it feels…different. Like I can't reach him. Like he's blocking me."

"Well, then…" Zethrid glanced swiftly to the side. "We'll have to wait for him to contact us."

"But it may be too—"

"We will have to wait for him to contact us," Zethrid repeated forcefully and with a meaningful look, as if trying to convey some kind of message.

Puzzled, Allura turned over the sentence in her head, trying to see what Zethrid was getting at. 'Waiting' wasn't it. She had emphasized 'him' and 'us.' In a flash of insight, Allura caught on.

"Copy that," she said in her most disgusted voice to cover for Zethrid. She didn't want anyone else on the cruiser picking up what Zethrid had meant and punishing her for it.

Allura closed the channel, her brain spinning.

"What was that about?" Hunk asked.

But before Allura could answer, Zarkon's army arrived.

Allura stared, horrified, at the sheer number of ships suddenly clogging the space around Daibazaal. She thought she'd seen them all when she'd rescued Lotor from Haggar, but that had been a fraction of what they now faced. She couldn't see to the end of the battleships, that's how deep the full compliment appeared.

"Holy crow," Lance whispered.

"We are so screwed," Pidge said.

"We've faced worse," Shiro said, though he hardly sounded convincing.

Allura's pulse quickened. "We need to form Voltron. Now. We have to destroy that gate."

"You heard the lady," Shiro said, flying the black lion into position. "Form Voltron!"

A few ticks later, Voltron accelerated straight toward the gate, sword and shield at the ready, and met with instant resistance from all sides. The battery of laser blasts enveloped Voltron like a cocoon. The shield was worthless against the onslaught. Allura tried to erect a shield of magic around Voltron, but the blasts were so relentless that she couldn't concentrate enough to more than sputter through a few false starts.

Then suddenly, their right flank cleared enough for Allura to take a breath and erect a barrier.

"We heard you could use a hand," Matt said through Allura's communicator.

Allura opened her eyes to see a substantial battalion of rebel ships already engaged with Zarkon's fighters. It was not nearly as many as Zarkon's army, but it would give them enough breathing room.

"Woohoo! Thanks, Matt!" said Pidge.

"Anything for my little sister," Matt replied as he narrowly dodged an incoming fighter. "Whoops. Better start paying attention. Later gator."

"Lotor's cruiser is under attack!" Hunk yelled. "There's no way it's going to make it without help."

"But we need to tear down that gate," Allura reminded him. "If Zarkon takes control—"

"You were the one who said we owed Lotor's people our lives," Pidge reminded her. "We can't abandon them."

"They'll just shoot at us after we save them," Lance pointed out. "But…you're right. We can't leave 'em."

Allura struggled internally between her desire to save innocent people and her need to save Lotor. She knew she couldn't do both.

"All right. Cruiser first. Then the gate."

As one, the paladins raced toward Lotor's cruiser, lions roaring as Voltron sliced through one of the attacking Galra battleships with its scimitar. The ship exploded as fighters scurried around it like fleas.

Another ship shifted its attack from the floundering cruiser to Voltron. Fighters shot ion blasts at Voltron's head, trying to blind them.

"They do know that's not how that works, right?" Hunk said.

"Hunk, form shoulder cannon," Shiro said.

"On it," Hunk said, as he slammed home his bayard, creating the cannon.

Voltron fired the cannon's multishot beam and took out nearly all the engaging fighters at once.

"Couldn't have done it better myself," Lance said. Then, "Pidge, look out! It's going to ram—"

But before he could get the words out, a third battleship slammed into Voltron's left side. Allura felt it hit her energy barrier and cried out at the sudden pressure. She lost hold of the barrier and it disintegrated, taking part of the battleship with it. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.

"Pidge?" Allura said. "Pidge!"

"Number Five, are you all right?" came Coran's voice through the communicator.

"Coran, you're here! Thank the stars," Allura said. "Did you convince them?"

"He made a solid effort," Keith said through the communicator as well. "Kolivan was a tough sell, but in the end, he didn't want to miss out on a major battle."

"'He' is sitting right here, you know," Kolivan grumbled from a separate fighter from Keith's.

"Pidge?" Allura tried again. "Are you still with us?"

"Mmmph?" Pidge said. "Ugh, ouch. What hit me?"

"A battle cruiser," Shiro said. "And it looks like it's gearing up to try again."

"No, thank you. I'd like to not, if that's all right." Then the green arm of Voltron raised high and smashed the top of the cruiser, overpowering its propulsion system and smashing it into the fourth battleship, which had been maintaining fire on Lotor's cruiser.

"All right. Now the gate," Allura reminded them, hope returning. Maybe she could save everyone this time. Maybe Shiro had been wrong.

Plus, maybe if she attacked the gate, Lotor would try to stop her.

"Gate it is," Shiro said, and again, Voltron turned toward the gate.

Before they'd gotten halfway there, though, something unseen buzzed past Voltron's chest, firing a single shot at where the red lion connected with the black to form Voltron's arm.

"Argh!" Lance yelled. "My lion is beeping at me. Why is it beeping?"

"He's attacking the connection points," Pidge said, sounding impressed. "That evil, genius bastard."

"He's keeping us occupied so we don't destroy the gate," Allura said, erecting the magical barrier again to stop him from succeeding. "Ignore him."

"That seems overly harsh," Lotor said through Allura's communicator.

"Lotor!"

Zethrid's hint had been right—push _him_ to initiate contact by annoying him out of hiding.

"Finally," Allura said. "You..." But now that she had him, she had far too many things to say, all of them crowding her brain at once.

"I'm not letting you destroy the gate, princess," he said. "Just a few more doboshes, and it will all be over."

"I don't want that!" Allura shrieked at him. "You don't even know if it will work."

"Slav thinks it will."

"Slav thinks he could drown in a puddle!"

"Allura. I wouldn't do this if I didn't know it would work."

"Hoping is not the same as knowing."

"It's a risk we have to take."

"Oh, please," Lance scoffed. "Get a room."

"Shut up, Lance," Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro said simultaneously.

"I'm not letting you do this," Allura said. "I'm just not."

Then with more magic, she pushed Voltron in the direction of the gate.

"Um, maybe we should hear him out," Pidge said.

"What—?"

But something slammed into Voltron again, this time from the back.

"That wasn't Lotor's fighter!" Pidge said. "And it wasn't a battle cruiser either."

Voltron swung around just in time to dodge another blow from Zarkon's flail.

"Sweet mother of milkshakes," Hunk said. "He's got that quiznaking mech suit on again!"

"That might not be so bad. It nearly killed him last time," Lance said.

"It nearly killed us last time, too," Pidge reminded him.

"Pidge! Get that shield up!"

Electricity tore through Voltron as the flail impacted Pidge's shield. Allura screamed as her nerve endings burned. Then Zarkon pulled the flail free, and the power released them.

"Allura," Shiro croaked. "Can you reconstruct the magical shield?"

"I don't know," she said, coughing into her sleeve. "There was something about that blast. I think Honvera's found a way to feed the komar through Zarkon's suit."

"Oh, quiznak," Lance muttered.

"Form scimitar," Shiro said. "When you haven't got a good defense..."

"Go on offense," Pidge finished.

"That's right."

Voltron and Zarkon whirled around each other, trading blows, blocking when possible and suffering when not. Each blow left Voltron weaker, but Zarkon didn't seem to be so much as winded, let alone diminishing in strength. The bout continued for several doboshes in silence as the paladins worked together to stay in the fight.

"We're barely even touching him," Pidge said as she dropped the shield to catch and hold Zarkon's swinging arm away. "Our sword is practically bouncing off."

"We're stronger together," Shiro reminded them. "We're stronger than him."

"Someone needs to tell him that," Lance said wearily as he tried disarming Zarkon while Pidge held Zarkon's arm.

They seemed deadlocked, equal in strength, and without Allura's power to tip the scale, she wasn't sure how they could win. The rebels were overwhelmed, their ships exploding as often as Zarkon's fighters as they tired. The Blade was busy on the far flank and suffering almost as great of losses. Lotor's cruiser was doing what it could, but it had been crippled in the last attack. Even the castle was surrounded, its particle barrier sustaining hit after hit. They were running out of options. And there was no more backup left to intervene.

"It's time, Allura," Lotor said softly in her ear.

"Lotor, no!" Allura begged. "Please, don't do this. There has to be better way."

"This is the better way. I promise."

Tears streamed down Allura's face as she recalled Shiro's words.

"I want you to know," Lotor continued. "That I understand now—the story about the juniberry."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"On Sala. You told me it was your favorite flower, because it wouldn't bloom if even one plant struggled. Remember?"

"I don't. I don't remember that, and I have no idea how it has any bearing on you throwing away your life— _our life_."

Lotor ignored the comment and continued. "You said the juniberry understood that there was no purpose without…something. You lost consciousness before you told me what it was. But I finally figured it out. You were saying, 'there is no purpose without the people.' And you were right. That's what this is, Allura. It's me fighting for the people."

Battle raged within Allura as desperately as it did between Zarkon and Voltron. She knew what he meant. She knew they couldn't win without something turning the tide. And apart from that, she trusted Lotor. She believed in him.

"I don't want to do this without your assent, Allura," he said. "Please. That's all I'm asking—just for you to say that it's all right."

Allura wept, her spirit shattering into a million shards of icy glass.

"All right," she said. And then, "I love you."


	19. The Light

_All right. I love you_.

Lotor focused on the words, only the words, trying to block the searing heartbreak he'd heard in her voice as she'd said them. _All right_. He banked his ship hard to face the gate. _I love you_. He accelerated past a safe speed for the proximity of his destination. _All right_. He hadn't said it back to her. _I love you_. He couldn't have without breaking apart. _All right_. The gate—his gate—loomed large in his forward viewer.

 _I love you_.

Suddenly, something arrested his ship, decelerating it at too rapid a rate to be a normal tractor beam.

"Going somewhere, Prince Lotor?" Honerva said as her hooded image appeared superimposed over his view of the gate.

Lotor froze in dread. If his mother took possession of his ship, she would have control of the gate, the fathomless well of quintessence it opened into, and the entire reality on the other side. How had she found him? As far as his instruments knew, he was still cloaked.

"I must say, I'm disappointed. You never showed this level of initiative when you served the empire."

Lotor ignored her, tapping quickly through communication channels to try and reach someone from his team.

"Your friends will not be coming to your rescue this time, I'm afraid. I have blocked all transmissions into and out of your ship."

"How?" he couldn't help but ask.

"You didn't think you were the only one advancing in technological skill, did you? We have not been idle, my child."

He needed to stall for time until he could find a way out of this latest snare.

"What do you think will happen when you open the gate, mother? What do you think you will gain?"

Honerva's eyes narrowed. "I studied this rift for decaphebes before you were even born, Lotor. Do not presume to lecture _me_."

"You are not infallible. You failed to factor in the effects that prolonged exposure to quintessence would have on your neural pathways. You privileged data that corroborated your ambition, while ignoring data that could have preserved your sanity and maybe even prevented the destruction of Daibazaal."

"Alfor destroyed Daibazaal!"

"Your greed destroyed Daibazaal!"

Lotor trembled. He had never confronted either of his parents in this manner. Part of him felt like death doing so now. And though he spoke the truth, he knew it would have no impact on her. She was far too damaged. His purpose was not to convince her, but to provoke her enough to reveal a weakness. The tiniest crack could lead to freedom.

"You think it matters what you believe?" she hissed at him.

"I think it matters what I know," Lotor answered. "As much research as you conducted on the rift, you only uncovered half of the relevant information. Slav and his team completed your mathematical models. We know what will happen when I open the gate again, when the quintessence finishes what it started with you and Zarkon, before the trans-reality creatures interrupted your transformation."

"And what, pray tell, is that?"

"It will cure you of your immortality."

Honerva cackled. "That's what you think? That it will take away our longevity? Go ahead! Test your theory. Or better yet, I will test it for you, as soon as I relieve you of your ship."

Lotor pushed the controls of his ship past their limits, fighting to turn it just enough to fire his ion cannon at the source of the beam. But the hold was too powerful. He would have to reach out to Allura and hope she had the ability to relay a message, though he could see Voltron weakening in its struggle against Zarkon through his aft viewer. Any distraction, no matter how small, could tip the battle against them before he had a chance to open the gate.

A sudden explosion lit up his portside, rocking his ship with its proximal intensity. Stunned, Lotor blinked through the afterimage to see a Galra fighter flying through the flames evaporating into the void of space. It had hit Honerva's battleship a few levels above the beam, short-circuiting it for long enough to release its hold on Lotor's ship.

"No offense, man, but your mom is a piece of work," the pilot said as his fighter shot past Lotor's canopy. The voice sounded like the once-paladin, now Blade, of all people.

Lotor righted his ship and reengaged all thrusters. The thought of a Blade of Marmora actually helping him caused a strange sense of vertigo, but he'd take any help he could get at this point. He had to move quickly. It wouldn't take Honerva long to reset her tractor beam.

"Perhaps an armed escort to this gate thingey wouldn't be a bad idea?"

"I'd appreciate it."

After a tick, the Blade said, "You'd better be right about this, Lotor. We're betting the universe on it."

Lotor plugged in the codes that would open the gate's controls. The interlocking blades sealing the rift were made of steel-reinforced comet ore. The hope was that the thin layer of ore coating the blades would be enough to contain the quintessence when closed and enough to trigger the rift when opened. They had tested the gate only once, and only for a single dobosh before closing, but readings came back positive for quintessence as far out as eighty fathoms.

As he transmitted the codes, the locks disengaged and the indicator lights surrounding the opening turned orange. It would work again. It had to.

Fighters from Honerva's ship swarmed Lotor and the ex-paladin's fighter. Lotor took out as many as he could, but his focus had to be the encryption keys to retract the blades.

"I'm on it," the Blade said. He flipped his fighter into a corkscrew spiral and took out at least ten sentries in a single pass. Lotor couldn't help but be impressed. Maybe earthlings weren't quite as backward as he'd always thought.

With the last encryption key entered, the indicator lights flashed from orange to red and the blades began to retract. Beautiful golden light poured from the open gate, bathing the battle surrounding it in an astral glow.

"Wow," the Blade breathed as the melee ground to a halt.

Lotor's heart soared as the first few waves of quintessence flooded the cabin, washing through his body and extracting…something. He couldn't describe the sensation other than that he felt both less and whole in a peculiar way that nevertheless felt right.

For the first time in ten thousand years he felt peace—total peace.

"Pull up," he said quietly to the ex-paladin. "Your ship will be destroyed if you don't."

"Copy that," he agreed, and his fighter fell away from view.

"Take care of her," Lotor said.

"We will."

Then Lotor set the autopilot to carry him through the gate. He had one more duty to perform on the other side, but for now, he drifted on memories of Sala, of snow battles, of a laugh as pure as the quintessence surrounding him.

 _I love you, too_ , he said to the emptiness as the bow of his ship entered the rift.

o~o~o~o~o

Allura felt more than saw the gate open. Voltron was facing away from the rift, still grappling with Zarkon's mech suit. But once the light from the quintessence lit up the ships behind Zarkon, she realized she could feel the frequency of pure life force radiating through every molecule of her body.

This was their moment.

"We need to throw Zarkon into the quintessence," she said to the other paladins.

"What?" Hunk said, just as Lance asked, "Why?"

It was Pidge who answered, though. "The greater the concentration of quintessence, the more powerful the effects."

"All right," Shiro said. "Reverse thrusters in two, one. Now!"

Voltron, which had barely been holding Zarkon in place, suddenly reversed direction, falling backward. Zarkon's momentum launched him over Voltron's shoulder and straight into Honerva's ship, propelling both straight into the fullest magnitude of quintessence.

As Voltron twisted to face the gate, Allura took in the swells of quintessence, the sheer effulgence of which nearly overwhelmed her. Wherever Lotor was, Allura hoped he was feeling as awash in tranquility—mournful though it was—as she felt.

"He did it," Pidge said quietly, awe in her voice. "He actually did it."

"Look!" Hunk said. "Something's happening."

A sea of blue particles seemed to be diffusing from Zarkon's mech suit and Honerva's ship, coalescing into a dark blue blob that shifted and pulled, whirled into and out of shapes. Allura felt a prickle of dread through the radiant glow of quintessence. Something felt familiar about the substance, but she couldn't place exactly what it was.

"Oh, _no_ ," Coran said through the communicator, his voice stricken. "The rift creatures."

"What?" Lance said.

"The creatures from the rift that Alfor and the other original paladins fought on Daibazaal, before the war. The ones that—"

"That attacked Zarkon and Honerva when they were in the rift unprotected," Pidge finished.

"The very ones."

"Didn't Voltron destroy them after rescuing Zarkon and Honerva?"

"Must not have, at least, not all of them," Coran replied.

"So…they've been possessing Zarkon this whole time?" Lance said.

"Like, maybe that's why Zarkon and Honerva turned all evil," Hunk added.

"Regardless, the quintessence from the rift seems to be pulling the creatures from somewhere," Allura said. "Should we destroy them?"

But before anyone could answer, the creatures shot as one toward the rift.

"Lotor!" Allura cried out, afraid that he would run afoul of them on the other side of the gate.

But the creatures stopped just before the entrance to the rift and pulsed, releasing a vibration that made Allura's head pound and her stomach roil.

"Ugh, do you all feel that?" she asked.

"Feel what?" Hunk said.

"That frequency. It's hurting me."

"I don't feel anything," Lance said. "But I sure as hell see something. There's more of them pouring in through the rift!"

Allura opened her eyes at once to see an avalanche of the destructive creatures joining with the ones that had theoretically possessed Zarkon and Honerva. They were forming one massive swarm.

"Fan-freaking-tastic," Lance continued. "Now what do we do?"

"Maybe we can reason with—" Shiro started, but he was interrupted by the swarm's sudden reconvergence around Zarkon's suit and Honerva's ship.

"Oh, _hell_ , no. Not again!" Pidge said.

"Form shoulder cannon!" Shiro shouted.

Voltron's sword disappeared, the shoulder cannon taking its place.

"Fire!" Shiro said.

The cannon's multiblast shot a myriad of holes in the swarm. But as soon as the blasts dissipated, the swarm immediately closed ranks around Zarkon and Honerva.

"Hit it again!" Shiro said.

"All right, but I don't think it'll do much good," Hunk said as the blaster ignited and fired a second time.

The creatures filled in the gaps as soon as they were created, and worse, more streamed to join them from the still-open gate.

"We have to do something!" Allura said, frantic. "Lotor's still on the other side. The creatures may be attacking him as well!"

"I agree," Shiro said. "Any ideas?"

"There must be a weapon we haven't unlocked yet," Allura said. "The ore that Voltron is made of came from the same reality as those creatures. There must be something it can do. If we attack, we might trigger it."

"I'm hearing a lot of 'ifs' and 'mights,'" Hunk said.

"The only other alternative is not to try," Allura replied. "I'm not willing to do that."

"All right, team," Shiro said as they sped toward the besieged Zarkon and Honerva. "Connect with your lions, open yourselves up to suggestion. We'll have to act quickly if we want to beat these things for good this time. For now, form sword!"

Voltron crashed into the swarm, slashing with the sword, but as Allura expected, it had no more effect than the blaster had.

"Anyone feeling anything?" Lance asked.

"Not yet," said Pidge as she engaged the shield, trying in vain to block the creatures from swamping Voltron entirely. "Whatever it is, it better happen soon! We're almost as overrun as Honerva and Zarkon."

"We need some way to contain them at least!" Shiro said.

"Honerva and Alfor used a particle barrier," Coran reminded them.

"Would that work?"

"I don't know," Coran said. "But even if it did, it would take time to build and crystals to generate."

"It only worked temporarily anyway," Allura said, sweating profusely as she tried to force her lion through the mud-like consistency of the swarm. "And that wasn't for nearly the number of creatures we're battling now."

"Looks like we're back to forming a new Voltron weapon, then," Lance said.

The creature-blob formed a giant branch of itself and swung it hard at Voltron's head.

With difficulty, Shiro pivoted Voltron to the side to dodge the blow. "We need a giant bowl, or a sphere, or—"

"A net!" Pidge crowed suddenly. "The komar!"

"Way ahead of you, paladins," said Acxa through their communicators.

Then Zarkon's mech suit burst out from inside the blanket of rift creatures, somersaulting through space to fling off the few hangers on.

"Acxa?" Allura said. "How did you get in Zarkon's suit? And where is Zarkon?"

"Oh, he's still here," she said, and Allura picked up a muffled grunt as of someone getting kicked in the ribs. "He's out cold, though. And he looks…different. Older and somewhat shriveled."

"Okay, but how did you get through the creatures?" Pidge asked.

"Same way you did," Acxa said.

"Using a sword?" Hunk said.

"No, literally the same way you did. I followed you as you were making giant holes in it. I figured that you'd need support and that the mech suit was the best support you could get."

"Can you fly it?" Shiro said.

"I can fly anything," she answered.

"All right, Pidge," Shiro continued. "Walk us through your idea."

"The only technology we have that can pull life-force out of something is the komar. Zarkon's suit now has the komar built in. We funnel the creatures to Acxa, and she takes them out!"

"Sounds like a plan," Shiro said. "Form shield!"

And for ten hopeful doboshes, the plan worked perfectly. Voltron sliced the swarm into chunks with its sword, batting the chunks to Acxa to obliterate them with Zarkon's komar-infused mech suit. But the creatures were nothing if not adaptable. One moment, they were cooperating with their destruction, and the next, they altered their strategy in a way no one anticipated.

Allura had thrown up her magical barrier around Voltron again, now that the komar was no longer aimed at it. And once the creatures realized they couldn't combat the mech suit's weaponry, they attacked Voltron full force. But rather than battering the robot with brute strength of the swarm, they blurred their edges and merged with Allura's magical shield.

Allura screamed, feeling the invasion in every cell of her body.

"Allura!" Shiro yelled, but it sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a deep cavern, or perhaps that she was at the bottom of a deep cavern. Her vision had gone as dark as the rest of her senses.

Her heart pounded in panic for the first dobosh or so, and then she suddenly forgot why she was afraid. It was a silly startle, that's all. Something harmless had moved suddenly in her peripheral vision and made her jump. Nothing at all to be concerned about. She laughed at herself then, and thought she would have to confess to Lotor how soft she was becoming.

The thought of Lotor brought him to her as if she'd called him. He stood before her on a familiar grassy knoll, the sky a hazy, perfect greenish-blue. It was Altea, and she was home. She didn't know why, but her heart felt achy, as if she were only just returning after a long absence. But surely that was ridiculous. Why would she leave Altea? Everything she wanted was right there, especially Lotor.

He held his hand out for her, familiar sardonic smile on his face. She threw herself into his arms, joy nearly lifting her off her feet. She could stay here in this moment forever. She never needed to leave. She never needed to worry about anything ever again.

"Allura!"

She felt more than heard her name called, as if it were coming from a vast distance or as if someone had merely been thinking of her and she felt the echo of it. Either way, she didn't need to answer. The person was too far away, too inconsequential, too unrelated to her to matter. She had everything she needed now.

Lotor didn't speak to her, and he didn't need to. It was as if they shared the same mind, the same soul. He knew everything she felt without her having to communicate it to him, and vice versa. They were so attuned, that they were even feeling the exact same thing from moment to moment. Pure happiness. Content. Peace. No future, no past. Only now.

Then something appeared on the ground just beyond where she and Lotor were standing—a small, white flower. It looked familiar. So familiar, that at first it added to Allura's joy, though she had no intention of moving from Lotor's arms to examine it.

"Allura!"

Again, she ignored the almost-sound intruding on her peaceful moment. It could wait. Whatever it was, it could wait. Hadn't she earned this? Hadn't she sacrificed and worked and delayed her own happiness enough that she could now enjoy it without interruption?

The flower again caught her eye. It had moved. It had risen from the ground and was floating just out of reach. And it was glowing.

 _Allura_ …

This time, it was the flower calling her. The juniberry. That was its name. Why would a flower talk to her?

 _Allura_...

Allura stared at the glowing juniberry, suddenly terrified that if she reached out to touch it, this moment, Lotor, would vanish.

"What should I do?" Allura asked Lotor, though it felt more like she was talking to herself.

Lotor didn't answer, merely waited.

"This isn't real," Allura said, her heart cracking painfully at the realization.

 _It could be real, the juniberry said._ _You must choose_.

NO. No. _No_. This she would not lose. Not this. But hadn't she already lost it? Hadn't she already said "all right"? And then she felt it. The _wrong_ flowing like an underground river beneath her feet. She could ignore it. She could cling to the unreal. The juniberry had said she could choose.

 _You must choose_.

The 'must' was what made up her mind. She must because others were at stake.

Weeping, Allura crushed Lotor to her, even as she reached out to the flower and curled her fingers around its metallic body.

The petals pierced her hand through to the bone.

Allura felt the pain through her entire body, as if she was being completely remade from the inside out. In desperation, Allura drew on her magical power, shoring up her burning nerve endings, patching the holes in her psyche, using it to see through sightless eyes.

"Allura!"

The voice was closer now, and familiar. She didn't answer it, though. Instead, she did the only thing she could. She reached out with her power, seeking every molecule of pain in the vast ocean of venom around her and suffusing it with compassion. She did not endeavor to destroy but to merely undo, untie, loosen, dissipate.

"She can't take much more of this! There's too many of them! She's trying to take them all on at once!"

The more she picked at the edges of the malice, the more there seemed to be. It was refilling itself, reasserting its will. Where had it all come from? Where had it all started? Was there a beginning or had it always been?

"Her body is turning translucent."

"Allura, stop! Can you hear me? Stop!"

"If he doesn't get that gate closed, there will be nothing left of her."

She ignored the voices hammering at her consciousness. The animus, gelatinous and spiky at the same time, fought against her remaking. It didn't hurt anymore. Nothing hurt anymore. There was no Allura any longer, just a foggy memory of a container for The Quintessence, The Light. The Darkness recognized its antithesis and quailed. The Darkness, much diminished but not gone, felt a cutting, an amputation, and it screamed.

"It's closing! He did it, thank the stars!"

The Darkness whirled, leaping to attack the one that cut, but The Light drew it back, caressing its edges, embracing its atoms. The Darkness shrieked in agony as each particle The Light touched died and was reborn as quintessence.

"She's still fading! It's not working!"

Faster than The Light could move, The Darkness fled, taking with it a host into the farthest reaches of this reality. The Light prepared to follow.

"Honerva's ship—!"

"Let me try something."

"Acxa. I don't think—"

"This is my revenge."

"Acxa!"

The Light felt. It felt. Sadness. Joy. It was reminded. Of something. Something it had once known. It felt a lessening, as of something drawing it away. Power diminishing. Being contained. Braiding into a vessel of flesh and bone. A familiar vessel. A body. A collection of limited senses, of emotions, of compassion. The Light remembered. A name. A family. A home. The Light individuated.

"Allura!"

"Wh-what?"

"Holy crow, it worked! Acxa, it worked! Acxa?"

"What's going on?" Allura's voice sounded scratchy and breathy to her own ears. She struggled to blink. She couldn't see. Her body didn't seem to want to move. It felt foreign, like a badly fitted suit.

"Acxa…saved you," Pidge said. It sounded like she was crying.

"What's the matter?" Allura asked alarmed. "What happened?"

"The creatures attacked us. Somehow they got to you through your shield. And then, I think, your magic took over, joined with the quintessence somehow to save you."

"What?" Allura struggled up to a sitting position. "Where are we?"

"We're at Lotor's base on one of the fragments of Daibazaal," Shiro said, taking over for Pidge.

Allura looked around, her vision still compromised but growing clearer with each passing dobosh. Rather than in a medical bay or a chamber or even a control room, they were huddled on the floor of a giant hangar bay. The lions sat in a perimeter around the paladins, along with Zarkon's mech suit, dark and kneeling lifeless beside Blue.

"What about the rift creatures?" she asked, trying in vain to move her legs.

"After your power took over, they started exploding, one by one, then in masses," Shiro continued. "Clouds of gold dust everywhere. The quintessence acted like the komar, but in reverse. Instead of drawing out life-force, it injected itself into the swarm."

"It was like space fireworks," Lance added.

"But you wouldn't answer us. You were unconscious. Acxa led us to the base to try and help you. When you started fading—"

"I started fading?"

"It was like your body was converting to pure energy before our eyes," Hunk said. He'd clearly been crying, too.

"But then Acxa used the komar to help control your power, to weaken it, to bring you back," Shiro said.

"Acxa?" Allura said, all of it too much too fast.

"We think the komar absorbed her life force when she was using it to rein in your power. She's…gone."

Allura closed her eyes, reaching. "No, she isn't." Then, eyes still closed, she touched Acxa's hand, which she hadn't noticed until now was laying next to hers.

 _Acxa, you are not relieved of duty_ , she thought into the void. Then, with her power, she expanded Acxa's lungs, pumped Acxa's heart, and revived Acxa's consciousness from where it drifted toward The Light.

Acxa gasped and coughed beside Allura, rolling onto her side into the fetal position and retching.

"Holy—!"

"What the hell?!"

"Did you just bring her back from the _dead_?"

Allura opened her eyes, blinking as her magical sight superimposed over her physical sight made her dizzy for a tick.

"She wasn't dead," Allura said. "She was waiting."

Allura leaned heavily against Shiro, exhaustion washing over her. Just sitting seemed like a nearly impossible feat.

"What of Lotor? The gate?" Allura asked.

"He closed it just as it seemed the rift creatures were going to overpower you and the quintessence after all. He saved your life just as much as Acxa did."

Allura closed her eyes again, more tears slipping down her cheeks.

"I need to sleep," Allura whispered. "I can't…"

"Of course," Shiro said. "Coran will be here soon with the castle."

"Honerva escaped. Didn't she," Allura said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Shiro confirmed as the Castle of Lions gracefully landed just beyond the hangar bay doors.

"And the rest of the Galra army?"

"Are awaiting your command, my queen," said another voice as the door to the base behind them opened.

"What?" Lance said.

Kolivan and the rest of the Blade's commanders, along with Keith, Zethrid, and Ezor came forward and kneeled before Allura as she, with Shiro's support, pushed herself clumsily to her feet.

"You have conquered the conquerors," Kolivan explained. "You overthrew the emperor and sent his witch into an exile so deep, none knows to where she fled. Even the emperor's heir, Prince Lotor, has been vanquished. This, by our law, makes you queen of the Galra."

Before the battle, such an idea would have overwhelmed Allura, or perhaps made her laugh outright. But now, only one thing mattered to her. The rest would be managed as necessary until she accomplished her task.

"Very well," she said finally.

o~o~o~o~o

The next morning, Allura rose early and made her way from Lotor's chamber, where she had spent what little remained of the night, to Pidge's room aboard the castle.

"Lights," she said to the castle walls as she entered Pidge's room. Obediently, the lights blinked on.

"Mmpph?" Pidge said blearily from under her covers. "Wha—? What time is it?"

Instead of answering, Allura rummaged through Pidge's messy drawers to find her a cleanish outfit.

Pidge picked up the earthen contraption she called an alarm clock from the floor next to her bed.

"Quiznaking hell, Allura. I've only been asleep for three vargas."

Allura tossed the clothes she'd picked onto Pidge's bed.

"We have work to do," she said.


	20. Variables

_Two years later_

Allura checked the algorithm Pidge sent her three times before entering it into the newly modified console. Slav had been working on the data streams for eight moon cycles, so she was fairly certain the algorithms would work. But she avoided blinking as she typed to prevent herself from making a mistake entering the numbers.

Her fingers faltered as a strong memory overtook her of the moon base at Sala. She'd been doing a similar task at a different console then, the moment everything changed. For the space of a breath, an image of that moment superimposed itself over the dash in front of her, and she paused to reorient herself.

Memories of the moon base quickly led to the memories that came after, though, and the grief that had permanently lodged itself beneath her sternum made its presence known. She acknowledged it, then ignored it, conjuring the sound of Lotor's voice in her mind. _It's irrelevant, focus on the present_.

It was difficult to concentrate. The ambassadors from every Galra-occupied realm were making the pilgrimage to Daibazaal to ratify the governing agreements it had taken them the better part of two years to negotiate. Despite being at the center of the effort, Allura felt impatient at the disruption. She would be far happier once everyone had gone home again and she could return to the task that consumed every other waking moment, and many of the sleeping ones as well. The longer it took her to find Lotor, the more challenging it became to pay attention to anything else.

Regardless, the heads of planet and system would be displeased if she neglected her host duties. And worse, Kolivan would give her another lecture. If he weren't so quiznaking brilliant at interplanetary relations, she would have dismissed him from his role as first chancellor to the queen within a few quintants of appointing him. He was mostly insufferable, but he was also mostly right. And unfortunately for Allura, the insufferable and the right usually went hand in hand.

Allura gazed through the bridge's crystal windows toward the gate—immovable, unyielding-the opposite of what its name implied. It was the first thing she saw every morning and the last thing she looked at every night. She had stationed the castle here, because she simply could not stand to be anywhere else for long.

The paladins were most often occupied mediating border disputes, redistributing ill-gotten goods from Galra storehouses, offering restitution where possible and charters for future dealings where not. Shiro, Acxa, and Zethrid served as viceroys for the three major sectors of the Galra empire that had the largest populations, greatest number of occupied planets, or the highest level of unrest since the empire had changed hands. Ezor had agreed to a position as acting commander of the Galra army, just under Allura herself, until, she said, Lotor had returned and could take the position. The person she saw most, besides Kolivan, was Slav, but even he had been absent of late, visiting the Olkari for help with Allura's desperate plan to rescue Lotor.

Allura tore her gaze from the gate, returning her attention to the console where it belonged. She tapped in a few more number sequences, checking her work as she went. A few more modifications, and they would be ready to test the transponder, Pidge's genius contribution. It was not without its risks, but it would be worth it if it worked. _When_ it worked, she corrected herself.

Her friends might be far flung to the edges of the universe, but they were all returning today along with the ambassadors for the ratification, and for testing the transponder after the ceremony. She had asked them all to come, even though she really only needed Pidge and Slav, because she wanted their support. They were still her family, though their relationships of late had been more correspondent than close.

"My queen," Kolivan said as he entered, fist over heart.

"Kolivan," Allura said, not looking up from the console. "I have told you 348 times not to call me that in chambers. You are my head chancellor. You may call me by my name, at the very least when no one else is around."

"Yes, my queen," he answered with an expression that was as close to a smirk as Kolivan ever came. "You asked me to remind you when the ambassadors' arrival was imminent. They are due to enter the system in one varga."

"Thank you, Kolivan," she said, holding in a sigh. She saved her work and shut off the displays. "I will prepare and meet you in the council chamber."

"I know I do not need to tell you that this meeting—"

"No, you do not," she answered. "And I know I do not need to tell you that I will be present and attentive."

Kolivan's expression softened. "I realize this is difficult for you. You didn't ask for any of this, but you have navigated the murky waters of restoring balance and freedom to the universe with savvy and grace, and, by and large, without complaint. You are a good leader. Probably the best leader the Galra has ever had."

Allura stared at him. "Thank you?" she said with a question at the end. Where was this magnanimity coming from? Then she narrowed her eyes. "Are you flattering me because something terrible is about to happen?"

He laughed. "Savvy, as I said," he remarked. "But no. You may rest assured, my positive outlook is genuine. I believe the ratification will be successful, and then we can all take a much-needed break."

Allura stared at him even more. "Of everyone I have ever met, you are the last person I could imagine taking a holiday."

Kolivan looked momentarily abashed. "Ezor and I were thinking of heading to the Tula quadrant for a few quintants, but if I am needed…"

"Don't be silly," Allura said, smiling, genuinely happy for Kolivan while simultaneously envious of his easy ability to spend time with his partner. "You should go. After the ratification, it will be almost eerily quiet around here. No reason to stay."

"We will, of course, be here for the transponder test," he assured her.

"I appreciate that."

"Sir?" A voice Allura didn't recognize interrupted them through Kolivan's communicator. "The Gelgrethi ambassador would like a word."

"She's here already?" Kolivan responded.

"Yes, sir. She and her entourage are docking at the council ship now."

"On my way," he said. Then Kolivan turned to Allura. "I will see you in the council chamber, my queen."

Allura opened her mouth to correct his manner of address again but thought better of it and said instead, "Understood."

After Kolivan's departure, Allura made her way to her room and changed into her regalia, frowning at the overly formal robes Coran insisted she wear for the occasion. They were heavy and slightly gaudy, in her opinion. But it was a small price to pay to see a smile on his face.

Coran had taken control of the logistical side of running the empire. As chamberlain and chief steward, he planned the empress's official events, kept the storehouses stocked (with legally traded-for goods), and generally took care of the castle of lions, the newly built capitol structures and stations that crisscrossed the space surrounding Daibazaal, as well as managing other, miscellaneous domestic administration. He was so busy that Allura barely saw more of him than she saw of the viceroys, who traveled so much within their own sectors that she'd nearly forgotten what Zethrid looked like.

As if her missing him had lit a signal beacon in his brain, Coran popped his head through Allura's open doorway at just that tick.

"Ah, princess—I mean, empress. Sorry."

Allura waved in dismissal of the apology. "I'd rather hear 'princess' from you, actually. It reminds me of the past, and I was feeling nostalgic," she said smiling.

"You mean, the past where Zarkon was trying to kill us every other quintant and we were running for our lives?"

Allura laughed. "I suppose you have a point. Still, I miss seeing everyone."

"They're all coming tonight."

"I know," she said with a smile. "I can hardly wait."

Coran's expression turned concerned. "If I may, your highness…you…don't look yourself."

Allura spread her arms and looked down. "Too fancy? I was thinking I might change it for my paladin suit after all," she joked.

"The dress is lovely," Coran said. "I meant you. You seem distant, your spirit diminished."

Allura supposed this was true. Her spirit certainly felt diminished. It was unfortunate that the condition was visible to others, though.

"I am seeking the cure to my ailment even as we speak, and I have hope that it will prove successful."

Coran sighed doubtfully. "If you say so, princess."

Allura was suddenly feeling slightly irked rather than nostalgic. She smoothed her robe to hide her shift in mood.

"Did you need something, Coran?" she asked.

"Just you," he said. "I'm to escort you to the council chamber."

"Ah," she said. "I am just about ready."

She unclipped Lotor's juniberry from her bun and let her hair cascade down her back unbound. She retrieved the Galra ceremonial crown Kolivan had dug up for her from the top of her dresser—a twisted, knotted sickle of metal that somehow managed to be beautiful despite its gnarled, oil-slicked appearance—and placed it over her brow. Then she cupped the juniberry in her palms, envisioning it in its staff form. Obediently, the juniberry transformed into her ceremonial staff, stem lengthening to the floor, petals and pistil forming the tip and radiating a soft, glowing light.

"After you," Coran said, gesturing her through the door.

The work for the ratification had already been done—tedious negotiations, coalition building, gaining consensus on every minor nuance of language, reining in her temper, which grew shorter with every passing varga—it had been exhausting. All for a governing agreement that was only enforceable if a star system chose to enact it.

Many star systems, once released from Galra rule, had returned to their original systems of government, reinstating the heirs of rulers or holding elections or fighting duels for dominance. Allura actively encouraged them to do so, arguing that it was their right as free planets to choose for themselves.

But many other star systems had nothing to go back to, or had been under Galra rule so long that they no longer remembered—or wished to remember—what it had been like before they were conquered. These systems needed a template of sorts to restart their own government. Hence the ratification.

It had taken Kolivan a year to convince the already self-ruling star systems to help create such a template. They were so fearful of a new Galra empire that they balked at the idea of lending their support to such an initiative, even if it were backed by the heroic and beloved empress-paladin who had freed the universe from its malevolent dictator. But Kolivan's determination paid off, and each system finally made it to the negotiation table to contribute ideas, and in some cases resources, to the more floundering systems.

Unfortunately for Allura, though the negotiation itself had proved at times frustrating, the tedium of the ratification ceremony was infinitely worse. She forced herself to smile at every passing dignitary and toast to the honor of each system in turn, alphabetically according to the Galra spelling (which in itself had taken a moon cycle's worth of negotiation, but which logistically made the most sense, since everyone spoke Galra).

The one concession to happiness the evening allowed her was to see her friends at a distance or in passing. It was the closest she'd felt to home since Lotor disappeared through the gate. It was nice to see the paladins in particular, wearing the lion-appropriate formal wear that Coran had picked out for them—Pidge with green accents, Hunk with yellow, Lance with red, and Keith with black.

At one point in the evening, Keith and Lance walked by Allura's table, heatedly whisper-arguing with each other about something Allura couldn't make out. Whatever it was, though, Allura was sure it was just another thinly veiled expression of their obvious attraction for each other, which had been growing since Shiro had stepped down as black paladin to take the viceroy position and the black lion had chosen Keith in his place. She sighed wistfully, watching them.

Allura wished Keith and Lance would allow themselves to admit their feelings and stop wasting the precious time they had together. Maybe she should advise them to learn from her experience. Life was unpredictable. One could lose everything in a single heartbeat.

As the evening wound down, Allura found herself tired but also excited and nervous. Every varga that passed was one closer to testing the transponder. If it worked as it should, she might be able to locate Lotor tonight. It would take another device entirely to breach the barrier between realities to get to him, but in many ways, that would be the easier part.

They couldn't open Lotor's gate, because he had locked it on the other side of the rift. But a few modifications to the blue lion's teludav using the trans-reality properties inherent in the lion's construction made trans-reality travel without a rift possible. She had tested that functionality a few times, and had returned to her own reality successfully, thanks to Pidge's alternate-reality mapping system. In fact, the transponder Allura would be testing tonight was simply a sub-routine of the same mapping system.

Unfortunately, that was where the science ended. The rest depended on Allura's mystical abilities and her inexplicable connection with Lotor. And truthfully, she'd been avoiding using her power since she'd regenerated Acxa. To say she had been unnerved by almost becoming pure quintessence herself during that last battle was to understate her feelings on the subject by a factor of ten at least. And since the powers she'd needed since the battle had been of the more mundane variety, she simply hadn't made use of the mystical one. She was concerned that her inattention to it could hinder her ability to use the transponder effectively, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

In any case, she set the fear aside as she made her final farewells for the evening and headed back to her room to change into her paladin uniform. She breathed a sigh of relief as the suit slid over her skin, her gauntlet settled into place. This felt familiar, comfortable, dear even. With restored resolve, she marched to the hangar where Blue and the transponder and all her friends were waiting.

She hugged each person in turn as she saw them, tears hovering just behind her lashes through most of it. She loved these people. Even the strange earthlings.

"Thank you all for being here," she said. "I don't anticipate success on this first test of the transponder, but it comforts me to have you all here, since there is some amount of risk involved."

"Do you have an exit strategy, if the machine doesn't work?" Kolivan asked.

"Yes," Allura said. "Pidge and I have agreed upon a mathematical sequence, which we have encoded in the transponder and in my memory. It should act as a tether that she can use to pull me out if I get lost. Also, my body is a physical tether. If I stop communicating with the transponder, you can call me back to my body by invoking sensation."

"What kind of sensation?" Kolivan asked suspiciously.

"Pain," Pidge said. "Electrical shock, specifically."

"I am suddenly liking this idea far less." Kolivan folded his arms. "Cannot someone else attempt this experiment?"

"I am the only one with a connection to Lotor on the other side. It has to be me. But it _is_ statistically possible that—"

"Ha," Slav said, folding his arms as well. "Barely."

Ignoring him, Allura continued. "It is statistically possible that this solution will work."

"Allura," Shiro interrupted. "How do you know he is even still alive?"

"The same could be asked in reverse. How do we know he is _not_ alive?" She smiled slightly at him. "I have to try, Shiro."

Shiro took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All right. What do you need us to do?"

"Just being here to support me is enough. I couldn't do this without you."

Then Allura joined Slav at the console to calibrate the last few measurements and frequencies.

"I don't get it," said Lance. "Aren't there an infinite number of alternate realities? How do we know which one Lotor is trapped in?"

Pidge answered, tapping the console to project an image for the others to see. "Our theory is that alternate realities overlap each other, sort of like the scales of an onion," she said pointing to the image. "If that's true, then it makes sense for rifts between realities to lead to the nearest reality layer or the next, but not much beyond that. If that's true, then Allura will only need to search the few layers next to our own, which is a finite number."

"Okay, but, like, how does the search part work?" Hunk asked.

Pidge cast a worried glance at Allura that Allura pretended not to see. "We're less sure about that," Pidge admitted. "Allura will have to figure that out once she's in."

"It is similar to how you located Lotor when Honerva held him prisoner," Acxa observed.

"That is my hope," Allura said.

As silence fell, Slav said, "It's time," and gestured to the reclining captain's chair connected to the console.

Obediently, Allura sat in the chair, and with a deep breath, closed her eyes.

A curious sensation of cold suffused Allura's veins as she tapped into her power while cocooned by the electromagnetic energy surrounding the chair. The cold was the last physical thing she felt, though, as her consciousness wandered away from the room, from her friends, from her duties. She felt free. Almost as free as when she'd left her body to battle the dark rift creatures. The feeling terrified her. She concentrated on the mathematical tether she and Pidge had created. It held fast and comforted her. She would have a way back if she needed it.

 _Lotor?_

No answer. She increased her range as much as she dared, recalling the sensation of telepathically conversing with him from Earth. That had been the upper limit of their range. If he was anywhere within that range, he would be able to hear her—assuming he wasn't blocking her, assuming he wanted to be found, assuming he wasn't… She tore the thought from her mind before she could finish it. She would not consider the possibility. She would not.

She called again. Still no response. Then checking the tether first, she passed into the next alternate reality.

 _Lotor?_

No response.

She could feel herself tiring, as if maintaining two separate identities, one in this reality and one in her reality, were exponentially more taxing than existing in one reality. Her mind wanted to drift away from conscious thought, but she couldn't allow it. If she gave up her connection to consciousness she may never get it back. She had to hurry.

She pressed into another alternate reality, this barrier harder to push through. It seemed the farther she strayed from her own reality, the less familiar it was to her consciousness, and therefore, the harder to integrate with. She was barely holding on to the tether now, and she was only three realities deep. She was desperate to hear him. What if he was in the fourth reality and she couldn't pass through to him? Her heart quailed, but her resolve doubled. She had to retain hold of her consciousness.

 _Lotor? Lotor!_

Still nothing.

She forced her consciousness to press into the next boundary, and it _hurt_. Mentally, she screamed, and she imagined her throat feeling raw from it, though she didn't have a throat to actually scream with. The tether disintegrated from her consciousness. It was the first thing to go, but other things were disappearing as well. Like her purpose. Why was she here? Why was she? Why was? Why?

 _Lotor?_

She drifted, awareness dissipating, thought dissolving. Light. Darkness. Light. Light. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. Light. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. Light. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. Light. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. Light. Darkness.

Pattern.

Thought.

Pattern.

Thought.

Awareness.

Pulling. Stimulus. Pain. Pulling. Pulling.

 _Allura?_

Electricity coursed through Allura, making her scream. Her eyes popped open and the electricity stopped.

"Oh my god, Allura! Are you all right?" The voice. Pidge?

Allura coughed and sat up fast. "I heard him!" Or at least, that's what she tried to say. It took several ticks for her tongue to catch up with her thoughts. "I heard him. Where is he?"

Pidge blinked at her worriedly through her glasses. "You lost the mathematical tether. Where were you?"

"I was in the fourth reality when the tether broke. I don't know where I was when I heard him respond."

"You were in the _fourth reality_?" Pidge shrieked. "You weren't supposed to go past the second! This was only a test!"

"I didn't hear him in the second reality, so I tried the next one, and the next. It…hurt…" Allura admitted.

"Are you insane?" Kolivan yelled at her, apparently having gotten over his own shock. "Your duty is to your people! Your empire! You almost killed yourself looking for the impossible and endangered all of our progress toward bringing peace to the universe in the process. How dare you!"

"But I didn't kill myself," Allura protested. "And I found him!"

"We saw your consciousness dissolving," Slav broke in. "As I warned you it would if you went too far. The odds of you finding the prince decrease by 98,953 percent with each layer you attempt."

Allura frowned at him and pointed to the poster she'd affixed to the wall just above the console last year when Hunk had brought it back from Earth as a present for her. It featured a scruffy-looking space smuggler with the caption, "Never tell me the odds."

Slav hmphed, and then continued. "If Pidge had not sent that brilliant binary code of light and darkness, we might not have salvaged enough of you to pull back."

"Thank you, Pidge," Allura said humbly.

"I'm sorry, princess," Shiro said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I know you had hoped for a different outcome. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling you it's time to let go and move on."

"What do you mean?" she asked incredulously. "I found him! I distinctly heard him in my mind as you were pulling me back. I can use the coordinates in the transponder now to go get him in Blue."

Shiro shared a concerned look with Pidge.

"What?" Allura asked.

"I don't know what you heard," Pidge said. "But the transponder didn't record anything. There aren't any coordinates."

o~o~o~o~o

Allura rolled out of bed two vargas before everyone else awoke. She knew she had a small, almost nonexistent, window in which to try again. Kolivan would not let her near the transponder if he could help it. In fact, unless she was much mistaken, he had probably already ordered sentries to dismantle the console and the chair first thing in the morning. And even if he hadn't, the paladins were not likely to sit idly by while she threw herself into danger again. No, if she wanted to find Lotor, now was her last opportunity.

She snuck through the corridors of her own castle like a thief, dodging from shadow to shadow and avoiding cameras where she could. She reached the hangar at the Daibazaal base in record time, despite her skulking, but when she entered, she drew her bayard. Someone had beaten her there.

"I thought I might see you," Acxa said.

"I am getting in that chair," Allura said icily. "And there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Acxa smiled. "I'm not here to stop you, empress. I'm here to help you. I figured you would need someone on this end, monitoring."

Without another word, Allura threw her arms around Acxa and hugged her close.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Acxa patted her back awkwardly. "It's all right," she said. "I would do the same."

"I know," Allura said, wiping her eyes as she pulled out of the hug. "We don't have much time."

Within a few doboshes, Allura had explained the basics of operating the transponder and what to look for with the tether and the coordinates. Acxa took it all in quickly, and Allura resumed her position in the chair.

For the second time in as many quintants, Allura tapped into her power. When she felt the now familiar cold suffusing her veins, she reached out and pushed quickly through to the next reality. This time, she traveled more extensively within the second reality, pushing her call more thoroughly through as much of the dimension as she could reach within a handful of doboshes.

She heard no replies, though, so she pushed to the third reality, feeling the pressure to let go of her consciousness again. This time, her desperation was more acute. She couldn't mess up this chance to find him. She wouldn't have another.

 _Allura?_

Her joy at hearing the word in her mind—so clear, so distinct—was so profound that she nearly lost hold of her consciousness again.

 _I'm coming for you!_ she thought back quickly. _Where are you?_

There was no answer this time, but it didn't matter. She knew where he was. Third reality. It was all she needed.

She raced back to her body, arriving almost instantaneously as the thought occurred. She leapt out of the chair, startling Acxa.

"What happened? You didn't lose the tether," she said.

"I found him!"

"You did?" Acxa said, confused. "But there were no coordinates."

"I don't need them," Allura said, heading toward Blue.

"Wait!" Acxa said, hurrying to catch up. "What do you mean, you don't need them? How will you track him?"

"I know where he would go in any reality. If he is still alive, then he was able to maneuver away from the gate. If he was able to leave the gate behind, then there is only one place he would go."

"Where?" Acxa said. "Daibazaal?"

"No," Allura said, grinning like a lunatic as she jumped into Blue's mouth. "I'll be back."

"What do I tell the others?"

"Nothing. I will tell them myself when I return." Then she put on her helmet and prepped Blue for flight.

As the lion burst out of the hangar, Allura gave her dashboard a loving pat, saying, "Let's go get our wandering prince, my friend."

The lion responded with a deafening roar. Then a trans-reality wormhole opened to the third reality and Allura piloted Blue into the temporary rift.

A few doboshes later, Allura and Blue exited the wormhole into an ocean of light. Allura tapped the dashboard, scrolling through readings.

"This must be the quintessence Lotor released to help us defeat Zarkon," she whispered to herself. "How odd."

She had never seen a pool of the substance hovering in space like this before, but she supposed it made sense. She scanned the area for the dark rift creatures, but none appeared on Blue's scopes.

Blue swam through the liquid-like pool, swirling, flipping, and shaking like a kitten playing in a blanket.

"Yes, yes, I know," Allura said, laughing. "But we have work to do, love. Time to go." She entered the coordinates for a normal space wormhole to Sala. "Let's hope I'm right about this."

By the time Sala loomed large in her port viewer, she was starting to doubt herself. What if she was wrong? Part of her desperately wanted to reach out with her connection to reassure herself that she hadn't imagined it. But a larger part was terrified that she _had_ imagined it and wanted to confirm it with her own eyes if indeed she had. So she aimed Blue at the desolate wilderness Allura and Lotor had first crashed in and prayed to the stars that Lotor was there.

Blue flew low over the landscape, skimming just above the ground. Allura saw packs of koti and snow and not much else, which meant that Sala was pretty much the same in this reality as it was in hers. No sign of Lotor, though, which made her stomach ache as much as her heart. If she didn't find him…

Then she saw a shape in the snow that looked too intentional to be a drift. As they flew closer, she saw it was dome-shaped and definitely not built by nature. She landed Blue and nearly threw herself out of the cockpit, fumbling to pull off her helmet, despite the freezing wind. She took a few steps toward the doorway, sensing movement inside. She held her breath.

 _Lotor_.

For a moment, she wasn't sure if she'd said it out loud or to his mind or both. But either way it was definitely Lotor who had emerged from the shelter to stand in the snow. White hair, purple skin, flight suit that seemed worn but in good repair. And he had grown a beard.

She wanted to speak, but the sight of him—alive and beautiful—had taken her breath away. She seemed frozen to the ground from more than just temperature.

For the first time since she had given him the shuttle to escape the Blade's tribunal, she felt uncertain of where she stood with him. The beard had triggered it. He had obviously changed. What if he no longer wanted to be rescued? What if he no longer cared for her?

 _I love you_ , he said directly to her mind without uttering a word.

Tears slid down her cheeks, freezing before they had the opportunity to fall.

"I promised myself that would be the first thing I would say if you ever found me," he said aloud, sounding uncertain himself. "It seems silly now, since it's been two—"

Allura flung herself into his arms, crushing him with a strength she couldn't seem to moderate.

"I love you," she said aloud, sobbing. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Her joy reached such a fervor that her power reacted before she could stop it. A pink burst of light shot outward from her in all directions, obliterating the hut Lotor had been living in, though mercifully passing through Blue without much affect.

"Oh, no!" Allura said, pulling back, mortified. "I am so sorry!"

"Allura—"

"I didn't mean to. Shiro warned me I might lose control due to grief, but I never thought I might from—"

"Allura—"

"I am so sorry about your house. I can help you rebuild it."

"Allura!"

"Yes?" she said, distressed.

"I don't care about the house," he said, laughing. "Unless you intend to settle down here, I hadn't really planned on staying."

"Oh!" she said. "Right."

He pulled her into his arms again, cradling her face in one of his gloved hands.

"I hardly dared hope I would ever see you again outside my dreams. I never gave up, though I wanted to a few times last winter."

Allura pressed her face into his hand. "I am so sorry it took me so long."

"Well, it's not as if it weren't my fault for leaving in the first place."

She glared at him unblinking as she said, "Don't ever leave me again. Ever. Promise me."

He sighed, but it sounded relieved, happy. "I promise. Not even for a mission. You are entirely my mission now."

"There is no more mission," she said. "Zarkon is in custody, Honerva in exile. The Galra empire is peaceful and safe. Everyone is safe."

Lotor shook his head in disbelief. "You are a wonder."

"You are a wonder," she said back to him, reaching up to trace his cheek with her finger. "With a beard."

Lotor laughed and pulled her closer. "I can shave it off. It was just warmer."

"It doesn't matter," Allura said. "I love it. And I would love you without it."

He pressed his forehead against hers.

 _I want you_ , he said into her mind, causing her to shiver in places the wind couldn't touch.

She moved slightly, drawing in a breath, and kissed him. He made a sound of surprise and desire that drove all thought from her head. Looping her arms around his neck, she pulled him deeper into the kiss. She would never stop. She would never have to.

He pulled her body flush against his, as if he couldn't get close enough to her. She echoed every hungry, possessive thought he spilled into her head right back at him.

She finally broke the kiss to steal a breath of air, and he attacked her neck with more kisses. She momentarily lost all sense of where they were and what she was supposed to do, almost as if she were losing her consciousness again. But this time she wanted to let go. To drift into him and let him drift into her.

 _My spirit found your spirit_.

Lotor broke contact from her skin long enough to grin adoringly at her. "Yes, it did," he said. "You did."

Several long doboshes later, she heard the hunting call of the koti across the snow-swept plain.

"We should go," she said, reluctantly, her body cold and hot at the same time. "It's getting dark, and I destroyed the house."

Lotor chuckled, finally releasing her, though he took her hand as consolation. "I suppose you are right."

"The others will want to see you."

"I will be happy to see them as well," he said. "It turns out that, despite what you say, I am very boring to talk to."

Laughing, Allura intertwined her fingers with Lotor's. "Well, I will allow a brief visitation only. I must have you all to myself for a moon cycle at least."

Lotor squeezed her hand as he followed her toward Blue. "I think that can be arranged."


	21. Epilogue

_One year later_

"I want it noted on the record that I think this is a terrible idea," Lotor said, frowning fiercely at his wife.

"It is so noted, love. As it has been noted every time you have said it since I initially proposed the idea."

He tamped down his instinctive reaction to order her to comply with his demands—which, sadly, never worked on Allura, despite his position as head of her army—and opted for sarcasm instead.

"It's good to know that my opinion holds so much weight with the empress of Galra."

"It does," she said, patting his arm patronizingly. "When your opinion is valid."

Wonderful. Now he was annoyed as well as worried.

"You may have very little regard for the risk you are taking, but the rest of us are harder to convince. Healing a dying Balmera is not at all the same as healing an entire planet. A long-dead planet, I might add."

"A Balmera is a planet."

"It is a _creature_. A creature that was still alive when you healed it. The relative size difference alone should make it obvious how foolish this is to even contemplate. Not to mention the vast differences in biodiversity and climate and magnetosphere. The Rylthnor mountain range alone would take an unimaginable amount of power to—" Lotor stopped himself as he realized Allura had wandered off to gather more samples from the planet's atmosphere-less crust. "Are you listening to me?"

"Of course, Lotor," she said. "Blah, blah, henpecking, biodiversity, blah."

Lotor fought a smile. He would not let her divert him from getting his point across. She was being completely unreasonable.

"You are being completely unreasonable."

"You say that as if you didn't already know that about me," she answered. "It's been years now, darling. Keep up."

She handed him an armful of sample canisters that had already been filled so she could scrape a droplet of ice from a space-weathered crater into an empty container. She was wearing her paladin suit, which reminded him so strongly of when she'd come to retrieve him from the alternate Sala that he had the odd simultaneous sensation that he should drop everything and confine her until she gave up this ridiculous plan, but also that she could literally do anything and he really should stop worrying.

In the end, he ignored both impulses. Allura was powerful, but she was hardly invincible. And she never let anything go either. Not when she had settled her mind on it. So, it seemed Lotor was stuck with worrying.

"Can you at least explain to me _why_ you are determined to do this? Why you are risking yourself for a past that no one even remembers, let alone asked to be resurrected?"

Allura straightened, tilting her head to stretch her neck and shoulders. Her expression was at least thoughtful as she took a few of the canisters from him and headed back toward the shuttle. His earnest question had finally chipped through her deflection it seemed, though she had yet to respond.

Once they had stowed her spoils, they climbed into their seats and shut the hatch. As Lotor prepped for flight, Allura took off her helmet, smoothing loose strands of her hair back into her juniberry clip.

"I do have a reason," she said at last. "Several, actually. And none of them are 'just to see if I can.'"

Lotor sighed and took off his helmet as well. "What reason could possibly be worth risking your life?"

She fiddled with her helmet as Lotor set the autopilot to take them from the far side of the fractured planet back to the Castle of Lions.

"Symbols are important, especially now. Healing the planet represents healing the rift between friends that shattered the universe. If we can undo some of that damage, the universe can start to heal as well."

Lotor stared at her. "You're not serious. A symbol? You're going to attempt something that's never been done for a symbol?"

"The juniberry was a symbol, remember? And it ended up saving us both. Symbols are powerful."

"There are other symbols besides this lifeless pile of rock, Allura. Symbols that require far less sacrifice."

"The greater the sacrifice, the more powerful the symbol," she said with a knowing smile. "Or was it just that you had nothing else on hand from which to carve my birthday present, other than your irreplaceable trans-reality ore?"

Lotor had to concede the point, though in his mind, it still wasn't reason enough for what was at stake.

"Why _this_ planet, though? If you must heal something, why not Altea?"

Allura's expression turned sad, and Lotor almost regretted asking.

"Because there are no more Alteans. Coran and I are the last." She took his hand in both of hers. "But there are billions of displaced Galra. Some have settled in other systems, but most roam the galaxy in starships, because there is no place for them to land. They need a home, Lotor. We need a home."

He stared at her again. "I…" He trailed off, not knowing what he intended to say. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You're right."

"I'm always right, love," she said, with a teasing tone underlying her serious expression. "I'm the empress."

Then she kissed him.

Lotor let the matter drop, though he continued to have reservations as he observed (and occasionally assisted with) preparations for the task ahead.

The Balmerans, it turned out, were part of the equation. Hundreds of thousands from Balmera all over the universe had responded to the empress's request for aid, bringing thousands of power crystals with them to act as both focal points and amplifiers for Allura's quintessence-fueled power.

As the event approached, Balmerans flooded the halls, guest suites, conference chambers, and every other space fit for habitation. Coran was wearing himself to a shadow keeping everyone fed and entertained and organized. But the Balmerans were such a peaceful people that no one complained if the food was a few degrees cooler than the ideal temperature or the rooms were a little full.

Allura spent whatever time wasn't taken up by preparations with her guests, eating meals with them, conversing with them whenever possible, and doing everything in her power to convey her appreciation. Lotor helped Coran whenever Coran would let him. Lotor didn't feel entirely comfortable around the Balmerans, since his parents had been responsible for so much of their suffering.

Nevertheless, he came across Shay one night while he was attempting to deliver a message to Coran.

"Prince Lotor," she said, stopping him in the hallway. "I am pleased to have this chance to relay my thanks."

"Thanks?" he asked, uncertain. He had been occupied with the ministers of the Mneme for most of the quintant, discussing shipping avenues for the Galra supply line, so he couldn't imagine what she had to thank him for.

"For your part in securing freedom for the universe," she said smiling. "Freedom for us Balmerans especially. The decaphebes of living in subjugation to Zarkon were a very dark period for my people."

Lotor wasn't sure how to respond—he didn't want to appear ungracious, but neither did he wish for her to harbor any misconceptions about what had happened.

"I hardly deserve thanks, Lady Shay. It was my family's transgression, so it was my duty to find a way to put it right."

"Perhaps," she said. "But many would not have done what you did. And so, I am grateful. As are all Balmerans. We will do what is in our power to help restore your home world."

"For which _I_ am grateful," he said with a formal bow, though his voice betrayed his concern.

Shay laid her hand on his arm. "It is a risk, but not as great a risk as you fear. If it becomes too much, we will simply stop. And you will be there to ground the empress."

"I will?"

"The empress has not informed you of your role in tomorrow's proceedings?"

"No," he said, curious. "How can I assist her? I have no power."

Shay shook her head. "I have already revealed more than I ought. The empress should be the one to explain."

"I suppose I will go and ask her, then," Lotor said with a sardonic smile.

"Of course. I look forward to seeing you planetside," she said, and passed him to enter the council chamber.

A few doboshes later, Lotor found Allura conversing with Slav near a display panel in the castle's biometrics lab.

"May I have a word?" Lotor asked as he stepped into the room.

"I was just leaving," Slav said, gathering up a few spools of copper conductor from a stack near the door. "Remember," he said to Allura over the tops of the spools. "For there to be even a 58 percent chance of success, we must start tomorrow at the precise declination of 13 degrees, or the libration of Daibazaal's moon will—"

"Yes, I know. Thank you, Slav," Allura said, smiling briefly at the theoretical engineer as he left.

"I just had an interesting conversation with Shay," Lotor said after Slav was out of earshot.

"About?"

"Apparently, I have some role in this undertaking of which you have yet to inform me."

"Ah, yes," she said, blushing. "I was working up to talking to you about that."

"Well, now seems to be an opportune time, given that it is scheduled to begin tomorrow."

Allura turned back to the panel, tapping obviously extraneous data into it to avoid meeting his gaze.

He gently pulled her around to face him. "What is it? And why does it make you uneasy?"

"I was hoping not to involve you at all," she admitted. "I know you have reservations. And apart from that, you are right that it is risky. I wanted to…"

She trailed off.

"You wanted to protect me," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "You are entirely cavalier about risking your own life, but you draw the line at mine? That's unusually hypocritical of you, Allura."

"I know, I know," she said, her nose wrinkling in chagrin. "I didn't say it was fair."

"What is it you need me to do?"

Allura sighed, giving in. "It's Daibazaal. Ten thousand years is apparently long enough for people to have nearly forgotten what it was like. There are stories, but only bits and pieces, legends mostly. Your mother ordered all records of the planet scrubbed after it was destroyed. I don't know why she would—"

"She didn't want our history to show us a different path. She wanted us to have been Zarkon's empire always. Rulers rewrite history to suit their own ends."

"Oh," Allura said, softly, her eyes full of sympathy.

"It doesn't hurt me anymore," he said just as softly, stroking her cheek. "You have healed me already."

She leaned into his touch, closing her eyes and smiling.

"Anyway, what does this have to do with your plans for me tomorrow?" he asked, reluctantly steering the conversation to its initial purpose.

She sighed again, stepping into his arms and wrapping her own around him. From where she leaned against his shoulder, she said, "I need you to show me Daibazaal. You are the only one alive who was there. Well, the only one who is alive and still sane."

She was referring to his father, who had miraculously managed to survive the last battle, only to stare, silent and unresponsive, at the walls of his holding cell.

"How do I do that?" he asked, resting his cheek against her hair.

"I must bring you in with me," she said somewhat awkwardly, which Lotor had learned to interpret as there being no words in their language to more accurately describe what she meant. "I need to see Daibazaal through your eyes so I can recreate it."

"That is not so hard," he said. "But I must warn you that I do not remember everything. There is likely to be both flora and fauna that I had never known in the first place, in addition to those I have forgotten about over the millennia."

"It's all right. I'll follow as much as you remember, and then leave the rest for the planet to sort out on its own. It will be enough."

"How do you know it will be enough?"

She grinned at him. "Because it has to be."

"You just love throwing my own words back at me, don't you?"

"It puts a smile on my face, I will admit."

The next morning, they dressed silently in the dark, touching occasionally as they passed each other. They were greeted without fanfare by Kolivan, Slav, the other paladins, and the heads of the Balmeran teams. They had intentionally kept those informed of the attempt to heal Daibazaal to a bare minimum. Allura didn't want to disappoint anyone if it didn't work.

The Balmerans had stationed themselves strategically around the largest chunk of planet as well as on several of the pieces hovering near the main. Each team oversaw one or more battle-class crystals, which would act as touchstones for Allura when she needed power.

As Allura and Lotor took their positions several degrees north of the sealed gate, she explained the process. "First, I will draw the fragments close, weaving them together where I can. Then I will call in the atmospheric gasses. The challenging part will be reigniting the core. Without that, the planet cannot sustain life. Without that, we fail."

She pulled him to the barren ground, sitting cross-legged opposite him. He mirrored her, holding each of her hands in his.

"Close your eyes, and picture the Daibazaal you remember. The land, the water, the sky. The plants, the clouds, the insects. Remember the light, the smells, the space between. It's all right if it isn't perfect. The planet itself will help you."

Lotor did as ordered. He summoned what he could remember, starting with the easy things, the grounds around the castle, the trees he used to climb, the river with its silver-backed fish glistening in the moonlight. As he rifled through memory after memory, he could tell that they were becoming somehow clearer, sharper in his mind than they had been in eons. He also managed to call to mind things he shouldn't have been able to remember, like exactly how many shell segments a yul-beetle had, or the precise feather pattern of a jikka.

And surprisingly, he recalled emotions he had never had as well, emotions that made no sense but felt exceedingly real. Too real. Like the haunting melancholy of wind through a needle-bush, the exultant _I AM_ of crystal formation in a sealed cavern fathoms beneath the mantle, the quiet pride in a perfectly rotted log, the playful slam of waves battering a rocky shore. He sailed over mountains, buried himself in bogs, drifted with ice crystals on a bitter wind that reminded him of Sala, boiled in the bellies of ocean-floor volcanoes. It all felt so real.

But something was still missing.

He ran with wild edra through old-growth forests, searching for whatever it was. He tumbled into canyons layered with more colors than he could count, searching for the lost thing he knew he _must_ find. He sifted through oceans of sand with scuttling plyms, digging for it. Everything depended on it.

After what seemed like both a thousand years and yet only a handful of doboshes, he returned to the place where Castle Daibazaal once stood. There was nothing but a grassy valley there now, but it was how he remembered it—every blade, every petal, every leaf.

He remembered running through the grass when he was small enough that the fallow fields in summer grew fronds as tall as he was. And just as he thought that, he saw it. A small boy—himself—with short, neatly trimmed hair that made his ears look enormous, running through the tall summer grass. Not running, actually—ducking and dodging, as if eluding pursuit.

Lotor followed the boy in the way of memories, bodiless and omniscient. The boy had been crying, and he carried something small in his hands. A kitten. No. A kitten's lifeless body. And suddenly Lotor recalled the incident in its entirety.

Lotor had found the kitten abandoned, hungry, and as lonely as he was. He had taken it in as a companion, the way his mother had Kova. When he showed Honerva, though, she rejected the kitten, as she had anyone or anything that Lotor had bonded with, insisting that any attachment was a distraction from his training. She had ordered Lotor to get rid of it. Lotor pretended to do so but hid the kitten in his room, until one morning, Kova found him and killed him. Whether it was an act of territorial dominance or at the behest of Honerva, Lotor had never known for certain.

But he had run then, vowing never to return. He'd made it all the way to this grassy field when he tripped—the boy tripped—and he'd lain in the grass—the boy laid in the grass—and he'd realized with cold conviction that he couldn't leave, that he would have to go back.

He dug a deep hole for the kitten with his bare hands, whispering to the soil to keep him warm, to the grasses to stand guard over him, to the wind to sing him lullabies so he wouldn't be afraid. Then the small boy got to his feet and walked slowly back to the castle, head low, ears large enough in the waning light to cast their own shadows.

Lotor hadn't noticed when it happened, but he noticed now the land's reaction to his childish entreaties. The soil warmed around the kitten's body, the grass knotted itself into an impenetrable mat over the grave, and the wind wept a requiem of unknown measure. Daibazaal had grieved with him.

A great vibration thrummed through him, clattering his bones and jolting the synapses in every nerve in his body. Across from him, Allura cried out, nearly crushing his hands in her grip.

His eyes popped open. "Is everything all right?"

She released his hands so she could take off her helmet.

"Look around you," she said, her face wet.

Again, he did as instructed, removing his own helmet and standing.

Everything was exactly as he had seen it in his mind. Grassy fields, a small rise to the foothills of the mountains just beyond the valley. Stands of trees dotting the hills. A light wind ruffling his hair. And the smells… He inhaled as much as he could hold. He had forgotten what home had smelled like. The smell itself brought back memories he hadn't known were buried, both good and bad. But it was all there. The entire planet. He could still feel his connection to it.

In fact, something was pulling at him now, calling him to walk toward it. Something not far, but important. He registered Allura's curiosity in the back of his mind as he walked toward the thing that called him. He sent her reassurance as he followed the trail to its end.

He recognized it at once when he arrived, though the grass was not the tall summer grass from the memory. And the thing he found sitting on top of the kitten's grave was a long-legged, brindle-coated cat, the opposite in coloring of Kova, the same coloring as the kitten he had lost.

The cat trotted up to Lotor and rubbed against his outstretched hand as if long familiar with him.

"Who is this?" Allura asked from behind him. "A new friend?"

"An old friend," Lotor said, his throat feeling close.

"Hey, um, you guys…" came Hunk's voice from the communicators in their helmets. "You might want to look up."

Lotor and Allura took his suggestion. The once empty space around Daibazaal was crowded with more Galra ships than Lotor had seen in one place since Zarkon's final battle.

"What happened to keeping this low profile?" Shiro asked.

"I didn't tell anyone," Hunk said. "Did you tell anyone, Lance?"

"I didn't tell anyone," Lance said. "Pidge?"

"Nope, not me."

"I told them," Acxa chimed in.

"Acxa, when did you get here?" Lotor asked. "You were supposed to be overseeing the dismantling of the mines on Xahnu-B."

"I may have disobeyed orders. Just this once."

"I guess it's a good thing it worked," Allura said, smiling up at him.

She looked exhausted. And was he imagining it, or were there new, tiny lines at the corners of her eyes?

"You are beyond miraculous," he said to his wife, kissing her gloved hand. "I will never question your ability to do anything ever again."

She laughed. "That is not true, Prince of Galra. Or at least I hope it isn't. It's your job to question me."

"You have a point," he said, smiling back. "Will you heal Altea as well?"

She sighed, leaning heavily against his arm. "I don't know. I'll think about it."

"So, like, can we come down there? Or…?" Hunk asked.

Allura laughed again. "Yes, you can come down."

"I have a feeling we're not going to be the only ones," Keith said.

"Tell Kolivan to communicate the plan for settlement," she responded. Then she looked back at Lotor and said, "Now the real work begins."

"Perhaps," he said. "But I think the harder part will be convincing my cat not to eat your mice."

"Oh, quiznak," Allura said, burying her face in his shoulder.

o~o~o~o~o

 _Another year later_

Allura had been avoiding Lotor for the entire quintant. Not that he'd noticed right away. She had been absorbed in a trade dispute negotiation with Kolivan for most of the morning, which was far from unusual, and Lotor had been validating troop deployments to the Uliazlund quadrant, so it wasn't as if he weren't distracted.

But when she had not shown up to their usual lunch, and she was missing again at supper, he began to suspect she had more than trade disputes on her mind. So, he searched for her in her usual haunts. He debated whether to reach out to her through their telepathic link but decided to wait to see if he could find her by looking first. He didn't want to have a difficult conversation through their link if indeed a difficult conversation was what awaited him.

He finally found her in her favorite thinking spot near a waterfall not far from castle grounds. He almost didn't see her at first, she was so well hidden by the boulders that lined the pool below the falls. She didn't look up when he approached, seeming lost in thought. But he could tell she knew he was there and wasn't acknowledging him, which meant something was definitely wrong. She was many things but never reticent, and certainly never with him.

Rather than push her to talk, he simply climbed up to her perch, sat next to her on the flat, moss-covered ground without saying a word, and waited for her to speak first.

"We have never talked of having children," she said, apropos of nothing.

"Children?" he said, puzzled. Whatever topic he might have imagined was troubling her, children was not it. "As in, our own children?"

"No, Lotor. Other people's children," she said flatly. "Of course, our own children. Why have we never…you know…discussed it?"

"We have been a trifle busy resettling a planet and keeping the peace and a few other things I could mention."

She sighed heavily, and then said, "That is your excuse for everything."

"Well, aside from it being a perfectly valid point, I suppose I hadn't thought about it. If it has been so much on your mind, you could also have brought it—"

"Lotor, I'm pregnant."

Lotor blinked at her dumbfounded, her words not really registering in a way that made sense.

"I'm sorry…what?"

"I'm pregnant."

Lotor's vision speckled around the edges, and Allura's voice seemed to be coming from the bottom a long access shaft.

"I'm just as surprised as you are," she went on, dropping her gaze. "By normal Altean biological standards, I shouldn't be fertile for another decade or so, but I think that the effort to heal Daibazaal aged me a little prematurely, and it's not entirely unheard of for a pregnancy to occur earlier than norm—"

"Wait, wait," Lotor interrupted, his mind struggling to parse what she was saying. "You are…carrying a child?"

Tears brightened her eyes, her expression troubled.

"I am carrying _our_ child," she corrected him.

He stared at her stupidly for another full dobosh before mentally shaking himself. His reaction was _hurting her_. That realization forced all his faculties back into working order at once.

He pulled her into his lap, throwing open the floodgates of his emotion and pouring it directly into their mental connection. He would allow no misunderstanding between them.

She gasped, clinging to him under the onslaught of his tumultuous joy and adoration.

As she wept from the overload, he murmured into her hair, "Am I nervous? Of course, I am. I have no experience with healthy familial relationships, and I am scared to death I will muck it up. But there is nothing, _nothing_ I want more than to raise this child—our child—with you."

She trembled in his arms as he continued.

"You have to forgive me if I do not react properly when you tell me these things. I had never, not in ten thousand years, been happy, until I met you. It still catches me unawares sometimes. Not only because I am unaccustomed to it, but also because I know I don't deserve it. Not this much happiness, this persistently. Thus, it continues to surprise me. Every time."

 _Stop_ , she said in his mind. _No one "deserves" happiness. Just as no one deserves misery. We work toward happiness. Ours and others'_.

 _If that is so_ , he thought back, placing a careful hand on her abdomen, _then I look forward to our next happiness_.

She smiled up at him briefly, but then her expression turned uncertain again.

"There's more," she said.

"There's more?"

She took a deep breath, as if preparing to tell him something she suspected he wasn't going to like.

"If it's a girl…" she said and stopped.

"Yes?" he prompted, after a few ticks of silence.

"If it's a girl, I want to name her Honerva."

With that single sentence, he felt completely bewildered again.

"But…why?" he asked, almost amused by her preternatural ability to throw him completely off balance at every turn.

"For a number of reasons," she said. "It is Altean tradition to name the first-born daughter after her father's mother. But beyond that, Honerva was a brilliant and dedicated woman, before the rift corrupted her. She cared deeply about her people, both those of her birth and those she adopted when she married your father." She paused, lacing her fingers through Lotor's. "She was so much more than what she became, but the universe only remembers her as Haggar. I want to honor the brave explorer she truly was."

Allura—his miraculous, _pregnant_ wife—was not wrong. Honerva had been more than the wretched creature she became. But the idea of naming his child— _his child!_ (it still shocked him to think it)—after her left him uneasy.

He greatly appreciated Allura's intent. She was the most magnanimous person he had ever met. That she could put aside her own family's deaths at his parents' hands long enough to even consider such an act was mindboggling. And it meant a lot to him that she valued him and his history enough to entertain the idea in the first place.

But Lotor struggled to find a single positive memory with his mother in it. The most he could manage was the smallest shred imaginable with just a ghost of a smile from a time before he understood the concept of words to name it. Did he want this precious new life to be forever shadowed by such a compromised eponym?

"I am not sure how I feel," he said finally. "May I think on it?"

"Of course, love," she said, looking relieved. "And no matter what we name her, she will be a shining beacon of justice and service and wisdom."

"She has you for a mother, so I don't doubt it."

"And you for a father," Allura reminded him.

"Well, then, at least she will have some sense of self-preservation."

Allura punched his arm. "More like she'll chase you through some gate leading nowhere without any kind of plan for getting back."

"Or that," he said, smiling.

She twisted in his lap so she could face him nose to nose. "I love you," she said, cradling his face in her hands.

"I love you, too," he said, his heart full.

"And I should warn you that there is a slight side effect to Altean pregnancy," she continued, a mischievous expression flashing across her face.

"Oh, really? And what's that?"

Instead of answering with words, she used their connection to inundate him with feelings of relentless, unquenchable desire. His body responded instantly with a craving that rivaled hers as she destroyed him with a hungry kiss.

For half a tick he fretted that someone might come along and interrupt them, but Allura's tongue was curling around his own, her breath hot, her body pressed against his, her hand sliding across his hip, and her voice in his mind describing in detail all the things she was going to do to him and all the things she wanted him to do to her. Had he been thinking anything, he couldn't remember or care what it was.

She pushed him down onto the bright yellow moss, tugging her hair free of the juniberry clip as she pushed aside his shirt to nip at the skin beneath his collarbone.

"Want to try an experiment?" she whispered breathily into his ear.

 _With you? Always_ , he answered…and it was his last cogent thought for a long while.

They didn't return to the castle for another two vargas, long after the sun had set beyond the ridge. Kolivan was probably wondering where they were. Slav probably wasn't.

Lotor brought Allura's hand to his lips and kissed it as they walked. He pushed away the thousand worries crowding his brain. The Azlunders and the Ulians were still fighting over territory. There was a growing faction among the Galra bent on destroying the peace they had thus far managed to instill in the universe. And Hunk still hadn't finished refining his cookie recipe. There was far too much to accomplish over the next year to make the universe perfect for its soon-to-be new inhabitant.

"What are you thinking?" Allura asked.

"I'm thinking about cookies," he said, smiling. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we may need about a dozen."

"Cookies?"

"No. Children."

"I'm sorry…what?"

o~o~o~o~o

 _Eight years later_

The spring melt had come late in the year, so no one at Castle Daibazaal seemed able to contain themselves indoors when the sun finally reappeared, Lotor included. He had been feeling restless for weeks, a new development that seemed to be getting worse with each passing quintant. So, he had taken the morning off to get out of the castle and away from the never-ending loop of prioritization and evaluation and compromise that went along with managing an empire.

He had wanted a walk alone to settle his mind and discover the source of his restlessness, but it wasn't more than a few doboshes before he ran into his daughter, who had somehow slipped her tutor and abandoned her lessons.

"Honerva," he said, holding off on judging her a truant until he'd at least asked the question. "Did you finish your lessons?"

"All but quantum physics," she admitted, her expression sheepish, triggering a shadow of a memory in Lotor's mind.

"Let me guess," he said unsmiling. "Eigenstates?"

Honerva, sensing an opportunity for commonality, said, "I don't get why we can't measure the values of every particle's position and momentum. Why can we know for some but others are probabilities?"

"You'll have to ask Slav if you want to debate theory. I never truly figured out the why of it—just the how."

It was then Lotor noticed the unfamiliar sword clutched in his eldest daughter's hand, and understanding dawned.

"I see the paladins have arrived," he said, crossing his arms. "Which one was it this time?"

"Uncle Lance," she said, unable to contain her enthusiasm. "Isn't it beautiful?" She swished it experimentally in the air. "Acxa said she'd show me some new moves this afternoon, and I…"

"…couldn't wait another dobosh," he finished for her.

She scuffed her boot in the dirt, looking exactly like Allura in that moment, with her chagrined yet somehow calculating and still altogether adorable expression. He knew he should tell her that she could train with Acxa only after her lessons were complete. But it was such a beautiful quintant, and she was such a dutiful child, that he couldn't bear to crush her spirit. Kolivan would tell him he was going soft, but he fully accepted that he had done so long ago and was rather better off for it.

"All right," he said, finally allowing himself to smile. "But we will reconvene on quantum physics tonight after supper. I can show you some of the shortcuts that helped me when I was first learning."

She beamed at him, catching him around the waist in a quick hug.

"Thanks, father! I promise I will be…"

But whatever promise she had meant to convey to him was lost on the wind as she trotted down the hill toward the training facility to the east of the castle. He smiled after her, his heart lighter for a moment before turning restless again. The outdoors was not improving his disquiet. If anything, it was underscoring it, as had his interaction with Honerva.

"She is your 'spitting image,' as Pidge says."

Allura had come up behind him without his noticing. She still moved with the stealth of a warrior when she wanted to, even this late in pregnancy when her middle was as round as the moon.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that she looks just like you."

"I find that amusing," he said, turning to offer her his arm. "Considering I was just thinking how much she resembled you."

"Either way, there is no mistaking her for someone else's child."

"Certainly not," he agreed.

"You seemed somewhat pensive this morning during the briefing," she said as they strolled the grounds near the west wall. "Is there something on your mind?"

Lotor supposed he should know better by now than to think he could keep anything from his wife for long. Not only did she know him better than anyone ever had, she was also keenly observant, a trait that made her a phenomenal ruler. At which thought, the restlessness grew, as if pointing him in the direction of its source.

"I think I need a change," he said. "I think we all do."

"What kind of change?" she asked, curious rather than defensive.

Lotor shook his head. "I'm unsure. I just feel that we are becoming too complacent. Are we doing what is best for Honerva and the twins? We are shut up in meetings nearly every quintant. We barely see them. And they've experienced little of what lies beyond Daibazaal. How will they lead in a universe they have such limited personal understanding of?"

As he spoke, it felt obvious that this had been the source of his agitation—not the long, bitter winter cooped up indoors, not the endless, repetitive tasks required to govern. His family felt disconnected, moored to a place rather than to each other. As important as that place was, as much as they had sacrificed to resurrect it, it still wasn't the most important thing.

"Perhaps a vacation would be in order?"

But Lotor shook his head again. "I think it needs to be longer than that."

"How long exactly?" she asked.

"Long enough to show them the universe."

Allura considered this, her expression introspective. Lotor could almost hear her thinking through the logistics, the potential ramifications, the risks and rewards.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" she asked finally.

Was he sure? He had only just thought of it. He'd even started the conversation by saying he was unsure.

But as he questioned himself, he only grew more certain. It wouldn't be immediate. There were assurances to be made, preparations, and Allura should have the baby on Daibazaal first before they left. But soon. It needed to be soon.

"The only thing I've ever been more sure of is my love for you. And I discovered that in a single moment, on Sala, as I was carrying you across the snow. You awoke in my arms and said my name. Do you remember?"

"I do," she said. "And in case you're curious, I first discovered I loved you when we were arguing over whether you would use the castle encryption code to message me. Remember that? I wouldn't admit it at the time, even to myself, but I knew."

They came to a stop at the edge of the garden veranda, a short wall separating them from the rolling hillside dotted with tiny shoots of flowers and shrubs. Lotor pulled Allura against him such that they were both facing south toward the now interred gate, his arms circling her, holding her close. The sight of his home world on the brink of new life filled him with both satisfaction and a wistful ache. He would miss this, even if leaving was the right thing to do.

"I believe in and value all the work we have done to make the universe a better place. I am sure that we will continue that work no matter where we are and what we are doing. But we owe it to each other to put our family at the center of our attention for a while. There is no purpose without the people, remember?"

She smiled up at him, resplendent as the sun.

"Excellent point," she said. "But just so you know, you had me at 'I need a change.'"

Lotor chuckled at that.

"You do realize," Allura continued. "That several of our friends, Coran especially, will insist on accompanying us."

"I can live with that," he said. "As long as we are together."

"All right," she said. And then, "I love you."

He kissed her starlight hair.

"I love you, too," he said.


End file.
